The Sigma Foundation’s Third Book is Focused on Experimental Photography
The Sigma Foundation has announced its third book, Trevor Key, which it says is the first to honor Key’s processes and prescience and is an enduring visual love letter to the future of image-making.
As a recap, the Sigma Foundation was established by Sigma, the lens manufacturer, last July as a dedicated initiative to support photography as both an artistic and cultural practice.
“The Sigma Foundation was founded by Kazuto Yamaki, president of Sigma Corporation, to support and promote photography as an art form. Sigma is a Japanese manufacturer of photographic lenses and cameras. A deep respect for the arts guides Sigma’s engineering, as the company continues to develop and innovate products that support the passion of artists,” Sigma said in January when it published its first two books, Hanataba by Sølve Sundsbø and Songen by Julia Hetta.
Trevor Key’s experimental photography spanned over 20 years, from 1972 to 1995. The Sigma Foundation says that over the course of his creative journey, he chose like-mindedly exacting conceptual thinkers, including art directors Jamie Reid, David James and Peter Saville with whom he would imagine, visually problem solve, and take creative risks.
“Within the visual heart of this book is Key and Saville’s experimental collaboration that ventured beyond the confines of commissioned album covers into a personal quest that Saville and Key shared to rethink image-making and have a truly independent and speculative creative flow,” the Sigma Foundation says. “In the book’s conversation between Key’s collaborator and celebrated art director Peter Saville and writer and curator Charlotte Cotton, Saville gives a detailed and deeply personal account of the context, practices and radical shifts in visual culture that he and Key created together.
“In the mid. 1980s, Key flipped analogue darkroom conventions and made vibrant and abstract images that are as contemporary today as they were in 1987, and an enduring marker of the freedoms that human-scaled and collaborative processes hold and a route map for creating the visuals of our time.”
The 244-page book will be available in an edition of 1,500 through this run and includes photographs by Trevor Key, an essay by Charlotte Cotton, and an interview with Peter Saville and Charlotte Cotton. The book is printed by Hakko Bijutsu and will measure 213 x 285 x 24.5mm. The book is scheduled for release “around August.”
Image credits: The Sigma Foundation
