Visionaire #43: Dreams [2004]

New copies sealed in Visionaire shipping box. Numbered edition of 3,000.
Hardcover in custom slipcase. Laser-Cut portfolio. 9781888645446

Visionaire, the limited-edition fashion and art quarterly consistently pushes the boundaries of what a publication can be. For their 43rd installment, Dreams become reality in an issue "printed" entirely without ink. Exploring cutting-edge technology, photographs and illustrations are transformed into ethereal works of art through a process called laser cutting. Contributors include Craig McDean, Maurizio Cattelan, Adam Fuss, Mario Sorrenti, Simon Periton, and Bruce Weber. These intricate, lace-like masterpieces are protected in a specially designed hard-cover book and slipcase.

From Visionaire: 43 DREAMS uses no ink. Images are rendered via a high-tech laser-cutting process in which artworks (by Simon Periton, Rachel Whiteread, and Nick Knight, among others) are literally burned into paper. Slipped into a book of multicolor foil, the resulting pages are haunting in their shadowy nature. The young girl in Adam Fuss’s photo assumes a ghostly quality, barely perceptible until the laser-cut is reflected onto the foil page. Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times wrote that the issue’s pages were “vaguely akin to holographs or old daguerrotypes, as is the implicit magic that comes with finding a face or flower, as if conjured up, out of the darkness.”