After years of snapping photos on the sets of commercials and music videos, and also recording her personal life, The Partners’ Film Company director Floria Sigismondi has put the results together on the pages of her latest accomplishment, a collection of photographs called Redemption.

A few years ago, Sigismondi was approached by a German publishing company about including some of her photographs along with a number of other artists in a collection called Surreality. From there, she came up with the idea of putting together a book composed exclusively of her own work.

Some of her favorites from Redemption include the cover shot of David Bowie (although she says it’s difficult to tell who it is because his face is partially covered), a picture of Marilyn Manson and some selections from her music videos. ‘Sometimes the pictures go by so quickly in videos,’ says Sigismondi, ‘that you don’t get to see the details of the set.’

From her personal files, a photo that holds a special place for Sigismondi is a shot of a doll’s head taken from a psa for Lupus disease.

Her parents, Italian opera singers who she says ‘are pretty theatrical and make great characters,’ also make an appearance on the pages of Redemption in a wedding-type photograph taken from a video she shot in a German expressionist style. No stranger to their daughter’s works, the Sigismondis have also appeared on the pages of a catalogue she shot for MAC Cosmetics.

With about seven years of commercial directing under her belt, Sigismondi has come a long way since her first spot – a commercial for condoms that she says she was talked into doing.

‘It was so bad,’ laughs Sigismondi as she describes the inaugural spot featuring two condoms being blown up on air machines until one flies away. (The ad, incidentally, never made it onto her reel.)

A graduate of the Ontario College of Art, Sigismondi started off painting and worked one photo course a year into her schedule. But attracted to ‘the immediacy of it, the photography grew into an obsession,’ and after graduating, she began snapping pictures for advertisements, fashion and record covers.

Soon after, she met Don Allan, then owner of Toronto’s Revolver Films, and decided to try her hand at directing, learning as she went.

‘It encompassed everything from painting that I’d lost when I started doing photography. Directing brought a lot of the painting stuff back,’ she says. ‘It allows you to create a mood, it had sound, it just encompassed so much more.’

While Sigismondi is involved in many artistic endeavors – from shooting still and moving pictures to sculpting and painting – she doesn’t view them as different media.

‘I look at them as where I can get the most creativity out, or in the end, where I can be most fulfilled and go places I haven’t gone before,’ she says.

Sigismondi is now in the initial stages of development on her first feature film, the details of which she will not disclose, and is in the midst of working on numerous installation pieces. Both of these projects give her the freedom that she needs.

‘With the installation pieces I don’t feel the need to censor myself, whereas in tv or even a music video, no matter how edgy the artist may be, it’s still tv,’ she says. ‘I think that is why I am so intrigued about doing a film right now. I don’t have to censor myself and it’s a longer format dealing with the spoken word, which is a whole new challenge for me.’

On the commercial front, Sigismondi has had a big hand in giving Eaton’s its new funkier look with her post-heavy fall fashion spots, ‘Lucky You’ and ‘Closet,’ through Roche Macaulay & Partners. She also directed a recent spring fashion spot for Eaton’s, which has a retro music video appeal.