Overview
Return to origins
Brake returned to New Zealand permanently in 1976, settling in Titirangi, Auckland. Besides photographing museum and art objects for books, he also undertook substantial commissions for Time-Life. He photographed both Sydney and Hong Kong for their ‘Great cities’ series. He also engaged in corporate work, photographing for annual reports and in-house magazines.
But Brake also returned to his original love: photographing New Zealand. As well as working towards a new version of New Zealand, gift of the sea (published posthumously in 1990), he photographed for The Readers Digest Guide to New Zealand (1988).
New Zealand Centre for Photography
Wanting to give back something to his country, Brake became a prime mover in founding the New Zealand Centre for Photography in 1985.
He intended the Centre to both promote photography within New Zealand, and also to help raise the standard of local work. His vision for the Centre was never fully realised, however, and it was wound up in 2010.
Brake’s legacy
Brian Brake died suddenly in 1988 at the age of 61. His work nevertheless continued to appear in a range of forms. Posthumous publications included the 1990 version of New Zealand, gift of the sea and Maori art: The photography of Brian Brake (2003). Large-scale audiovisuals of his New Zealand landscape photographs were shown in the New Zealand 1990 sesquicentennial exhibition Expo 90, and in the 1992 Seville world fair Expo ’92.
Three exhibitions of his work have been held at Te Papa: Brian Brake: China, the 1950s in 1995 (with accompanying catalogue); Monsoon in 1998; and Brian Brake: Lens on the world (with catalogue) in 2010. Brake’s long-held ambition to publish a book on the ‘Monsoon’ work was finally realised when Monsoon was released in 2007.