Photographer Who Brought The World Into Our Homes

15 October, 2010

MEDIA RELEASE

Experience The Work Of The Photographer Who Brought The World Into Our Homes – At Te Papa

Brian Brake: Lens on the World (www.tepapa.govt.nz/brianbrake) will open at Te Papa this Labour Weekend and is accompanied by a beautifully produced hardback book of the same title, edited by the exhibition’s curator Athol McCredie, and published by Te Papa Press (RRPNZ $99.99). The exhibition will be displayed on Level 5, and admission is free.

‘Te Papa sincerely thanks Mr Wai-man Lau, whose generosity in gifting Te Papa this significant archive has made Brake’s work available to the nation in perpetuity’, says Mr Michael Houlihan, Te Papa’s Chief Executive. ‘Nearly 50 percent of Te Papa’s art collection is a result of donations from the public, groups, and artists themselves, and the collections are greatly enriched by these kinds of bequests.’

Brian Brake: Lens on the World features more than 200 superb photographic reproductions from the Museum’s permanent art collection and is the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of the Magnum photographer’s work.

Brake began learning his craft in camera clubs as a teenager in the South Island, then at a portrait studio and as a cameraman at the National Film Unit in Wellington.

His international career began when he was introduced to the Paris-based photo agency Magnum by one of its celebrated founders, Henri Cartier-Bresson. Brake worked with Magnum during the 1950s and 60s through what was to become a golden age for photojournalism.

Brake’s work was published in magazines such as Life, Paris Match, National Geographic and Illustrated. He was regularly and repeatedly commissioned for large-scale projects for which he was flown from one side of the globe to the other at a time when only the wealthy could afford the experience of air travel.

Included in the exhibition is the international award-winning film, Snows of Aorangi, for which Brake was both Director and Cameraman. The photographic images in the exhibition include those he was invited to take in 1950s Communist China and Soviet Russia; Roman and Egyptian ruins as they were in the 1960s; candid shots of celebrities such as Pablo Picasso, Robert Kennedy, Queen Elizabeth, and the Dalai Lama; promotional work undertaken for Air New Zealand and Tourism New Zealand in the 1970s and 1980s; and groundbreaking work with craft objects and taonga Māori, including some of those which travelled in the 1984 Te Māori exhibition. Together, this exhibition gives an unprecedented insight into Brake’s life and his view of the world.

Brian Brake: Lens on the World is only possible due to a substantial gift made to the Museum in 2001 by Mr Wai-man Lau. The gift includes over one hundred thousand images taken by Brake.
Prints of the exhibition images are available to purchase from the Te Papa Picture Library (http://www.tepapapicturelibrary.co.nz), and the exhibition will tour New Zealand institutions, after its Te Papa debut, beginning with Christchurch Art Gallery in September 2011.

Brian Brake: Lens on the World
23 October 2010 – May 2011
Level 5, Te Papa
Free entry

ENDS

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