Visionaire

2000 - very rare limited edition. N°1426/3500.

New, unopened, in original plastic wrap.

Jean-Louis Dumas, former president of Hermes, carries around a little sketchbook wherever he goes and uses it to record all of his various travel experiences. Jean-Louis himself designed the travel pouch that houses 32 WHERE?. Contributors include Andreas Gursky, Mary Ellen Mark, Wolfgang Tillmans, Lauren Greenfield, Peter Lindbergh, and Jeff Burton. The postcards illustrate the original graphic treatment on the reverse side of each of the 55 silver-edged images. We sent boxes of them to friends in such far-flung places as Tokyo, Bangkok, Paris, and Brooklyn, which they then mailed back to us with the requisite postage stamps, and the inevitable wear and tear of shipping and handling.

1996 - very rare limited edition. N°284/2500.

Like new, in original (slightly open) plastic wrap.

17 GOLD is perfectly baroque. The cover of the issue is hologrammed, embossed, and foil stamped, all on an already solid-gold background. There are seven pages of Philip Taaffe’s gold stars foil stamped onto vellum. Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin’s fashion photographs feature gold-foil stamping on top of four-color prints - crazy in theory but even more so in practice, when sometimes the only foil-stamped element was the stud earring in the model’s ear! Cecilia tracked down OrigamiUSA, who folds a gold-paper goldfish for each issue, and Todd Oldham contributed actual gilded-metal halos. Such frivolities come thanks to this issue’s sponsor, the Japanese department store Beams.