Brian Brake photographs

This 2010 acquisition of 4,068 items gifted by Brian Brake's partner Wai-man Lau adds to the more than 115,000 images he gifted in 2001. It includes 35mm and 4x5 inch colour transparencies as well as original black and white prints. Most of these prints are ones Brake placed in the files of the Magnum photo agency, to which he belonged from 1955 to 1967. They demonstrate the sort of photographs both Brake and the agency though would best sell. Others include the working prints used for selecting images for his best-selling 1963 book New Zealand, gift of the sea. These allow researchers to see what didn't make the final cut.