Visionaire 24 - light

Visionaire teamed up with fashion luminary Tom Ford and Gucci on an issue devoted to the theme LIGHT. This was our most ambitious project to date in terms of content and production. There was a conscious effort on the parts of both Visionaire and Ford to steer clear of fashion and to focus on what we considered to be fine-art images. LIGHT introduced a new cast of contributors to the Visionaire fold: artists such as Sam Taylor-Wood, Andreas Gursky, and Christopher Bucklow; art director Peter Saville; animator Hayao Miyazaki; and architect Toyo Ito. Then there was the issue itself. That winter found us doing everything from sourcing the state-of-the-art, paper-thin filament that would literally light up the issue (a couple people in our office were nearly electrocuted in the process!), to negotiating the price for 33,000 batteries. The end result: twenty-four large-format transparencies self-contained in a super-sleek, fully-functional light box-the first battery-operated publication! Only 3,300 copies were made.