Brian Brake: a photographer’s love for Asia
Brian Brake’s short stopover in Singapore in 1951 led to a lifelong love affair with photographing the people and sights of Asia.
The famous New Zealand photographer travelled the world on assignments for the Magnum agency, and Asia featured prominently in his work.
Photo: Near Sanmen Gorge, Henan province, China, 1957
Later, between 1962 and 1976, Brake was based in Hong Kong, where he documented daily life, and alos travelled to several Southeast Asian to take photographs.
He left behind an impressive collection of about 115,000 images, which his long-time partner and assistant, Aman Lau, donated to Te Papa Museum.
Photography curator Athol McCredie drew on this valuable store of famous and lesser-known photos to pull together the largest exhibition of Brian Brake’s work to date.
Brian Brake: Lens on the World is an unprecedented chance to see highlights of Brake's work in chronological order, and get a flavour of the photographic craft he excelled at. For the exhibition, McCredie has balanced commercially famous photos with those previously outside the public's focus - but which represent the photographer’s lifetime and travels. 
About a third of the images in the exhibition were taken in Asia – including his famous Monsoon series from India, and shots of Maoist China in the 1950s. Te Papa has also made more of his photos available online.
Photo: Gathering dyed cloth on the banks of the Sabarmati River, Ahmedabad, India 1958
What attracted Brake to Asia initially was the hustle and bustle of everyday streets – something quite different from the staid Western environment he had witnessed in New Zealand and Europe. “I was more comfortable in Asian situations than European,” said Brake. “There wasn’t the language barrier. In Asia they don’t put you down if you don’t understand the language.”
China
In the early years of the Cold War, with help from Magnum founder Henri Cartier-Bresson, Brake became one of few foreign photographers Chinese authorities permitted to take photos.
He spent three months in China in 1957, and later was the only independent Western photographer allowed in to document the 10th anniversary of the Communist republic in 1959.
The spectacle of official Tiananmen Square parades was what magazine editors went for. McCredie said that American audiences would have been thrilled at seeing the photos - feeling a mixture of fear, awe and fascination.
Photo: May Day celebrations, Tiananmen Square, Beijing, 1957
But Brake also took many black-and-white photos of ordinary people going about their lives.
“Those photographs were never really published," McCredie said. “Why was it? Were they not spectacular enough, or were people not genuinely interested in China?
“Personally I think his Chinese work is among his strongest photography. One of the hardest decisions to make was to cut it down to just 10 or 15 images for the exhibition.”
Mcredie believed that Brake's insight into 1950s China was unique, not only for a Westerner photographer but for the Chinese too. Few Chinese photographers at the time documented life away from the sanctioned official view of it.
India
Monsoon is Brake’s best known photographic essay, first published in Life magazine in 1960.
Monsoon struck a chord with audiences around the world. “While it wasn’t thoroughly groundbreaking, it was unusual enough to catch people’s notice," said McCredie. "The fact it was published entirely in colour was also unusual for 1961. Monsoon was purely a picture essay, a story without words on a grand theme, the cycle of life and death in India.”
Photo: Jaipur, India - From the ‘Monsoon’ series, 1960
Monsoon encapsulated and gave great exposure to Indian culture in New Zealand, the United States and parts of Europe at a time when people there still knew little about the South Asian country.
Exhibition travelling New Zealand
Brian Brake: Lens on the World opened at Te Papa in October 2010. It is currently touring New Zealand, and will be at the Rotorua Museum of Art and History from 14 December 2011 to April 30 2012.
Photo credit: All images © Brian Brake Estate/Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.