Floria Sigismondi, born in 1965, is a Canadian-Italian photographer and director of films and music videos. Her immense portfolio includes music videos such as “Mirrors” (Justin Timberlake), “Fighter” (Christina Aguilera), “Try” (P!nk) and “Dead Man Walking” (David Bowie). Her many honours at the MTV VMAs, World Luxury Awards and the International Cristal Festival attest to her brilliance in the field of filmmaking and producing.
Sigismondi, the daughter of opera singers, moved from Italy to Canada when she was two. She began her artistic education studying painting and illustration at the Ontario College of Art And Design but graduated with a major in photography. After establishing a thriving career of taking publicity stills for The Globe and Mail magazine, Sigismondi soon found her work in fashion photography artistically unfulfilling. “I like to make things more surreal, more like the expressionist painters. I wasn’t using the photography to document reality.” A switch from fashion photography to shooting album covers followed, then to film and music video directing, without much formal training. However, the transition from still to motion photography proved to be smooth using a series of images, rather than just one, to make her artistic statement.
Sigismondi was raised to be creative in an exceedingly inspired environment, with parents who encouraged a deep respect for the arts. Her influences range from the animations of the Quay brothers to the films of Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick and Uli Edel. The strange, grotesque dolls of Hans Bellmer and the works of David Lynch and Francis Bacon also inspire aspects of her films and photography.
For David Bowie’s Dead Man Walking video, Sigismondi created a surreal composition of disorganised characters, fantastically costumed and choreographed to display the emotional distress Bowie was exploring. For this video, Sigismondi was inspired by the work of the English painter Francis Bacon. Part of the action in the video is played out on sets that resemble the glass rooms that often appear in Bacon’s works. Bacon uses them as symbols of psychological and physical containment, but the transparency of the walls prevents privacy, so the audience becomes observers of scenes that are often painful and violent. Sigismondi places Bowie within these transparent rooms, to play out the private, disturbing aspects of the song’s narrative on a public stage.
Sigismondi quotes some of the imagery that is Francis Bacon’s signature style, such as her choice of a palette of bright greens, blues, red and yellows, used by Bacon to signal danger and disjunction. By blanketing Bowie in a face stocking, she echoes the writhing, faceless figures Bacon has in some of his works. More Bacon references include the gaping mouth filled with teeth, a veil of falling tears and the butchered carcasses of beef, suggesting the crucified bodies that hang throughout Bacon’s art. These symbolise the many ways, physical and psychological, we torture each other, as expressed by Bowie in his song.
Christina Aguilera’s song Fighter (2003) was based on Aguilera’s feelings about her ex-manager, who she alleges cheated her of money. Aguilera thanks the man for making her a "fighter” instead of complaining about him. She wanted to make an "emotionally rich and positive empowering" song, especially for women, inspiring them to stand up for themselves. Sigismondi expanded: “I wanted to do something more theatrical and she [Aguilera] was really into that.”
In the video, considered one of Aguilera’s most unusual, the singer’s transformation into a fighter is associated with the life cycle of a moth. Sigismondi decided to explore “the way nature deals with transformation” and about “coming from a very poisoned place to an empowerment”. The action takes place in a cavernous dark and industrial space. The video begins with Aguilera wearing a black velvet kimono, with three pins lodged in her back, making her hunch. Initially trapped in a glass box she breaks free from the box by pounding on it. She tosses aside her kimono, revealing a tattered, white, moth-covered dress, symbolizing her metaphoric evolution. In addition, her hair becomes an elaborate white thread, with moths flying around her. Near the end, wearing a spider-like dress, she is a "fighter".
To come up with visual concepts for music videos, Sigismondi listens to a given track numerous times to build an affinity with the song and draws inspiration from life, fine art, photography or new experiences. “It melds with little images in my mind... its like experiencing synchronicity.” Many of her ideas are about power, religion, sexuality, love, war, science and technology. The effects of science on the human body intrigue her and her imagery hints at an undefined future for the body that is frightening and compelling.
Although Sigismondi explores people’s darker sides in her music videos, she does not set out to make her audience uncomfortable. Instead, she believes she is posing questions and suggesting possibilities for her audiences to think about and she aims to subtly expand the consciousness of younger viewer’s minds. “I find these things very beautiful… to me, it all makes sense. It’s all actually very passionate and very emotional, so I don’t think of them as nightmares. If I did, I don’t think I could do them.”
Sigismondi designs the motion, sound, lighting, wardrobe and setting to give her videos a distinctive yet unified look. She uses a textured and layered approach to filming and, with her preferred director of photography, Chris Soos, is more experimental than conventional. Her techniques involve weaving in among the action to create a jittery feel, alternating soft and sharp focus; film acceleration; and abrupt changes of lighting. Most of the atmosphere in her videos is caught when shooting, but some of her films require postproduction digital manipulation. In Fighter, for example, computer-generated insects helped enlarge the cloud of moths and add to the effect of the swarm of creatures.
Floria Sigismondi is unquestionably one of the most exceptional and highly regarded music video directors today’s age has ever seen. Her methods of understanding the story behind the music and gaining inspiration for the visual concepts are what allow her videos to be famously recognised and appreciated across a wide audience. Her vast portfolio of many mediums prove Sigismondi’s greatness in the fields of film and photography.
