The Visionaire team had long desired to break the Guinness record to become the world’s biggest magazine, but it required a partnership with a man like Nizan Guanaes to ultimately make it happen. Guanaes, founder of Africa, Brazil’s biggest advertising firm, is the kind of outsize personality who might sponsor the world’s biggest magazine — just for kicks. And everything about issue 61, LARGER THAN LIFE, is big, from its proportions (91.4 by 125.7 cm for a standard copy, 145.9 by 200.6 cm for a deluxe version) to its cover star — the insanely famous and internationally regarded Lady Gaga. She is photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin (a team of supersize talent) to introduce an issue that contains work by Marilyn Minter, Ed Ruscha, and Bruce Weber. There is an epic, biblical, mythical quality to many of the images, from Marina Abramovic’s portrait with a snake to Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s photo of a “tree of knowledge.” Karl Lagerfeld interpreted the size theme by shooting himself in a forest of perfectly toned, endlessly long legs. “Trees are like columns of a nonexistent temple,” Lagerfeld explains of his inspiration. “So there is a feeling of mythology to it.”
