Book Reports

Taking an essential look at the landscape of collecting is a critical component of momentum in the art market. Venezuelan born art patron Tiqui Atencio explores the “whys” and “hows” of art collecting. Placing special attention on personal influences throughout her career—she sits on the boards of museums like the Guggenheim and Tate Modern—Atencio has done nearly 100 interviews with artists, collectors, and financiers to shape this guide. Wry, comical illustrations by cartoonist Pablo Helguera are sprinkled throughout.

The 1969 moon landing and the five more missions in the years that followed generated hundreds of photographs taken by the astronauts themselves. Photographs from every Apollo mission offer a glimpse not only of the historical moment when man first set foot on the lunar landscape, but of stunning compositions of space and the unknown. Accompanying the forty-four snapshots in the book are words by E. B. White and John F. Kennedy and an excerpt from the Apollo 12 communications transcript, contextualizing the space travel snapshots and the adventurous Americans who ventured far enough to take them.

There is a sublimity to Edward Burtynsky’s remarkable aerial views of industrialized landscapes, but they reflect a harsh reality. These natural abstract pieces are the working grounds of Agariya salt farmers of India—a community underpaid in their efforts to make a living extracting such a basic compound and, as Burtynsky writes, “one of the most basic elements of our diets.” Increasing environmental and financial hardships threaten a tradition rooted in four centuries of history. The newest collection in Burtynsky’s continuing series on industrialized land, these thirty one photographs set politics and aesthetics at the same table.