Overview
Brake cemented his reputation in New Zealand with New Zealand, gift of the sea. It was far more sophisticated than comparable New Zealand books, reflecting both Brake's overseas experience in producing magazine photo stories and his work as a film maker.
Brake had a major say in the layout and sequencing of images, which was conceived as a whole – like shots in a movie, each image and page relate to the ones before and after to produce an overarching narrative.
According to photography commentator Peter Ireland, the book was a ‘love letter to the land of his birth’.