Maori artefacts as seen through eyes of famous photographer

Press, 15 April 1980, Page 18

Maori artefacts as seen through eyes of famous photographer

By 1

DERRICK ROONEY

A- collection of Maori artefacts — useful items that have some aesthetic significance, too — as seen through the eyes of the famous New Zealandborn photographer, Brian Brake, is at present on display in the small gallery at the Canterbury. Museum. ■The artefacts, which include such objects as tikis, a knife used to butcher human flesh, canoe prows, and gateways, were photographed initially for a book; “Art of the Pacific.” which was recently published jointly by ' the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and the Oxford University Press, The exhibition is being toured by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which

commissioned Brian- Brake to prepare it. It will remain at the museum until next Sunday (April 20). All the artefacts depicted are regarded as having great archeological or artistic significance,, and several date from pre-' European times, when metal was unknown- to the Maori and carving tools were made from finegrained basalt and jade. One of them is unique; it is a figure carving from the Chatham Islands, dating from the occupation by a pre-Maori wave of Polynesians, and is the only figure carving to survive from this culture.

Other carvings in the exhibition include several gateways; a number of figures-in-the-round which once occupied prominent places in meeting-houses; three musical instruments, including a nose flute; and, several bone chests.

The latter were made to hold the bones of important . people, and were carved from wood. The carvings probably had mystic significance — they were intended to deter enemies from interfering with the; bones. It was the practice to humiliate a dead enemy by making flutes... or tools from his leg: bones,'■ and the purpose of the chests was to.guard against this. ' The-.originals of all the items are held in public collections in New Zealand. Some are in the Canterbury Museum, and others are in the-Auckland Institute and Museum, the Te Awamutu and District Museum, the Taranaki Museum, the Wanganui Public Museum, the

National Museum; and the Otago Museum. All have been photographed with remarkable sensitivity and close attention to detail by Brian Brake, who has used a variety of striking lighting effects to emphasise lines and textures.

Brake, who began his photographic career as assistant to a Wellington portrait photographer and was a cameraman for the National Film Unit in the early 19505, has been one of the handful of top professional photographers in the world for more than 20 years. In the fifties he worked in Magnum (the free-lance group based in Paris and New York) with such big names as » Henri CartierBresson. Robert Capa, the famous war photographer who was himself killed in the Indo-China War, was

another Magnum photographer. Brake moved to the Far East, and in the early 1960 s became famous for his photographs taken in India, China, and Japan. His colour photographic essay,. “Monsoon,” shot in India, has come to be regarded as a classic . work of photography since it was first published by several leading international magazines in 1961. The series was later shown at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and won an award of merit from the American Society : Of .. Magazine Photographers: ■

Later, Brake worked for “Life” magazine’s “cultural heritage” projects, and for a series of still photographs and a film on “Ancient Egypt” he received the Order of Merit from President Nasser. In the sixties and seventies, Brake was based in Hong Kong, and since 1970 he has had his own documentary unit, producing films in South-East Asia.

The arts council book from which the photographs in this exhibition are drawn has been one of his major projects in recent years. He began taking the photographs five years ago, during a brief return visit to New Zealand. Not long afterwards, he decided* to return to New Zealand to live, and he is now based in Auckland.

. According to a note circulated with the exhibition by the Ministry, his photographs “take the viewer beyond an overall appreciation of the object and into a consideration of the fine detail that the craftsman embodied in each work. Thanks to this

photographic . treatment the subject retains both its importance and integrity and thus the powerful communication of the carver is seen in its purest photographic form ’,’