Brian Brake was a photographer from New Zealand, worked as freelance photographer in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Background
Brian Brake was born on June 27, 1927 in Wellington, New Zealand. He was the adopted son of John Samuel Brake and his wife Jennie Brake (née Chiplin). He was raised initially at Doyleston, before his father moved the family to Arthur's Pass, where his father owned the general store, and Christchurch.
Education
Brian Brake attended Christchurch Boys' High School. His early interest in photography was inspired by his aunt Isabel Brake, who exhibited with the Christchurch Photographic Society, and several of his older cousins.
Brian Brake trained with wellington portrait photographer Spencer Digby from 1945. Three years later he joined Government filmmaking body the National Film Unit as an assistant cameraman. Brian Brake worked on 17 films at the Unit, mostly as a cameraman, occasionally as a director. Though Brake's skills with studio lighting were utilised, the majority of his work involved the NFU's heavy diet of scenic shorts, including a series of 'snow' films Brake filmed in the Southern Alps. Snows of Aorangi, one of three NFU films Brake directed, was the first New Zealand film nominated for an Academy Award, in the Best Short Subject (Live Action) category in 1959. It was beaten to the Oscar by James Algar's nature film Grand Canyon.
Career
Brian Brake left New Zealand for London in 1954. In 1955 he met Ernst Haas and Henri Cartier-Bresson, members of the photo agency Magnum Photos. This led to his acceptance as a nominee member in the same year, and full membership in 1957. He remained a Magnum photographer until 1967. He worked as freelance photographer in Europe, Africa and Asia until the mid-1960s, when he began working more exclusively for Life magazine.
Brian Brake is best known for his 1957 and 1959 coverage of China (where he was allowed an unusual level of access), his 1955 photographs of Pablo Picasso at a bullfight, His "Monsoon" series of photographs taken in India during 1960 were published internationally in magazines including Life, Queen and Paris Match.
In the same year as he shot "Monsoon", Brian Brake also photographed in New Zealand. The images were published in the best-selling book New Zealand, gift of the sea (1963). The book remained in print for over a decade and was republished in an entirely new format and with different images, but the same title, in 1990.
In 1965 Nigel Cameron and Brake published Peking: A tale of three cities, which was dedicated to Brake's father, John Brake. In 1967 Brake and William Warren were commissioned by James Thompson to produce The House on the Klong, which was first published after the mysterious disappearance of silk merchant and former CIA agent James Thompson, in January 1968. This book was the first of many on craft and art objects. Titles include The sculpture of Thailand (1972), Legend and reality: early ceramics from South-East Asia (1977), Art of the Pacific (1979), and Craft New Zealand: the art of the craftsman (1981).
In 1970 Brian Brake founded Zodiac Films in Hong Kong and made documentary films in Indonesia for the following six years. In 1976 Brian Brake returned to New Zealand. He commissioned an East Asian influenced architectural award-winning house designed by Ron Sang on Titirangi's Scenic Drive, in the Waitakere Ranges to the west of Auckland, where he lived with his life partner, Wai-man Lau, for the remainder of his life, although he continued to accept freelance assignments abroad. In 1985 he helped establish the New Zealand Centre for Photography.
Brian Brake died at Titirangi of a heart attack in 1988.