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This extract originally appeared in New Zealand Photography Collected: 175 Years of Photography in Aotearoa (Te Papa Press, 2025) on page 167.
This 1960 cliff-top scene on Moturiki Island appeared in Brian Brake and Maurice Shadbolt’s best-selling 1963 book, New Zealand, Gift of the Sea. The book was reprinted many times due to its popularity, but, when a revised edition was produced in 1973, the photograph was not reused. By then, the young holidaymakers’ once-fashionable clothes appeared dated. Today, it is exactly that datedness that makes the photograph interesting. The elevated view and bright blue expanse of the Pacific seems emblematic of the optimism of youth, and indeed of a country emerging from the dreary 1950s to the increasingly international, liberal and affluent era of the 1960s. Such an upbeat outlook looks clouded, however, when we focus on the relationships between the three young people. The couple are embracing, but the young woman is not at all engaged with her boyfriend. Her body is limp and her attention seems directed towards the other young man as he glances, in turn, at her. The distant speedboat slowly traversing the scene might stand for time, like the play bar at the bottom of a video. When Brian Brake pressed the shutter, he put the unresolved drama on pause forever.