Big New Photobook Puts You in the Heart of Antarctica

The good people of teNeues want to bring a whole damned continent into your living room.

As far as doing that via ink and paper and superb bibliotechnical production values, they’ve pretty much succeeded – and it’s called ART ARKTIS.

ART ARKTIS is a collection of photographic images – sharp, vivid, blazing with the coolness of uncountable shades of white and blue only occasionally studded with darker shards from the color spectrum – a collection shot on location within the stark landscapes and oceanic vistas of Antarctica by globetrotting lensers Dietmar Baum and Tini Papamichalis.

Shot over the course of three weeks, using “Hasselblad’s latest camera technology,” no less, these photographs capture the almost alien grandeur of our planet’s southernmost continent. Divided into chapters prefaced with a brief introduction in both English and German, the oversized (about 12” x 15”) volume treats our eyes to the ice, the water, the geology, the fauna (orcas! penguins!), even a few of the abandoned or ongoing human incursions into this most chillingly barren and barrenly chilling environment.

Verdict: Beautiful as this big book is now, you’re really going to appreciate it as a sort of perfectbound escape when the merciless Texas sun is blasting beyond Fahrenheit’s century mark in a few more months. You let Shiner Bock slake your summertime thirst with a kind of beverage cribbed from Germany, you should let teNeues slake your hunger for cool natural beauty with this well-made collection. Do you and your beertable – er, that is, coffeetable – proud.