Look Inside: Brian Brake edited by Athol McCredie

Proudly supported by the Friends of Te Papa

INTRODUCTION ATHOL McCREDIE

FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES 1945—1954

LISSA MITCHELL

Thoughtful rest c. 1946

Gelatin silver print 338 x 278 mm

Moy moy (Little miss) 1946

Gelatin silver print 360 x 289 mm Collection of Wai-man Lau

THE ROVING PHOTOJOURNALIST

1954—1959 JOHN B TURNER

Procession of Arab sultans, Say’un Wadi, Hadhramaut, Yemen 1958

Jordanian soldiers parading for the visit of King Hussein of Jordan, Bethlehem, West Bank 1958

Dal Lake, Srinagar, Kashmir, India 1957

Flower seller, Srinagar, Kashmir, India 1957

May Day celebrations, Tiananmen Square, Beijing, China 1957

Girls in May Day celebrations, Beijing, China 1957

Borobudur at dusk, Indonesia 1971

Jim Thompson’s house, Bangkok, Thailand c. 1968

Monsoon girl

From the ‘Monsoon’ series 1960

Jaipur, India

From the ‘Monsoon’ series 1960

colour, mostly in double-page spread. The overall impression is of a grand, unspoilt landscape, a human informality and quirkiness, and a native people in transition between tradition and modernity—an assumed belief in the benefits of fresh air, formal education and material progress underpinning all—and observed with skill, affection and pride. In high contrast to the National Geographic essay, it represents Brake’s coherent, personal response to his own country.

In a 1988 television documentary about his work, Brake said, ‘If you want to earn a living through it [photojournalism] you have to know the needs of the marketplace. Over the years you establish a reputation. Sometimes you can do what you want to do, in others you must conform to what others want you to do. It’s a balancing act the whole time.’22 Gift of the sea was probably the project in which he could most do what he wanted to do, where his personal response was neither shaped by others’ agendas nor confined by commercial imperatives. Despite his residence overseas from 1954 and his international career, he never saw himself as anything other than a New Zealander—albeit a seasoned expatriate, frequently worrying the issue in letters to friends.

‘This is not the usual book of New Zealand scenes! It is a book with that rare arresting magic quality of genius which distinguishes a work of art,’ proclaimed the Whitcombe & Tombs flyer announcing publication. Something of the enthusiasm and self-belief of the book’s authors had infected the publishers, and once the books hit the bookshops ten weeks before Christmas it was clearly contagious.23

Reviewers countrywide were uniform in their praise. Commonly picked out for comment were the newness of the concept (the authors ‘seek not merely to give a pictorial survey, but to reveal the nature and character of the land and its people’24); the youth and talent of the authors (‘Together two gifted young New Zealanders have given us one of the finest books on our country yet published … Imagination matches high inspiration in an appeal to the eye, the mind, and the heart’25); and the book’s educational value (‘There is majesty, discovery and poetry about this large volume. New Zealanders are going to learn a good deal about their country and themselves in it.’26) Overall, the consensus was that Gift of the sea was ‘the most outstanding pictorial survey of this country yet published’.27

When the book first appeared Brake was back in Hong Kong, and on 10 September he received perhaps his most interesting response to the book in the form of a telegram from Auckland: ‘Snap book beaut all the jokers in the pub say its bonza except Firth but dicken on him love Mum and Dad.’28 ‘Dad’ was probably his former Wellington employer and mentor Spencer Digby, then in retirement in Auckland, and ‘Firth’ probably Clifton Firth, Digby’s photographic equivalent in the Queen City.

When the sixth, revised impression appeared in 1973, reviewers tended to be a little more critical, but the overwhelming response was again positive. Representative of comments about the book’s continuing relevance was that of Alexander Fry, writing in the New Zealand Listener: ‘In 1964 [sic] Shadbolt wrote “We still prefer third-rate immigrants from Europe to first-rate people from Asia.” In the new Gift the phrase is still there, though the tense is changing. It should have been left out. Generalisations about firstrate and third-rate human beings sit uneasily in the vocabulary of a civilised man—especially of one who pleads persuasively for aroha in our multi-racial life.’29 Most reviewers remarked on the fact that 100,000 copies had been sold.30 ‘This alone,’ said the Nelson Evening Mail’s reviewer, ‘is massive proof of its worth, integrity and attraction, and demand appears to be insatiable.’31 Several reviewers reiterated the impression that, compared with earlier books on New Zealand, Gift of the sea conveyed the real New Zealand: ‘I know enough of New Zealand to find it impossible to accuse Mr Brake of gilding the photographic lily. The back country is as beautiful as he makes it; his Pakeha and Maori portraits do bring you into a New Zealand that really exists.’32 A Honolulu reviewer, writing of Shadbolt, observed: ‘The result is such a perfect blending of his text with Brake’s pictures that the two are really one. The words are pictures and the pictures are words—eloquent, moving and multi-dimensional in their impact, for this New Zealand, one feels, is THE New Zealand.’33

‘THE New Zealand’ seems a never-ending quest, rather like ‘the great New Zealand novel’.34 Perhaps the need itself is more interesting than any attempted resolution—although that is another story. The book’s timing was absolutely right, and Brake and Shadbolt were the men for the job. New Zealand, gift of the sea possibly came as close to ‘THE New Zealand’ as anyone might get. For Brake, particularly, the project cemented his sense of himself as a New Zealander, and the book became his love letter to the land of his birth.

Mount Taranaki from Tariki 1978

Akaroa, Canterbury 1978

Hand from an image of the Buddha, National Museum, Bangkok, Thailand 1970

Head from an image of the Buddha, National Museum, Bangkok, Thailand c. 1970

Nikau series, by Neil Grant

Taken for Craft New Zealand: The art of the craftsman (1981) c. 1980

Kahurangi Kiwi, by Hepi Maxwell

Taken for Kahurangi: Treasures from New Zealand (1984) c. 1984