Te Maori: Treasures of the Maori

by Brian Brake (Photographer)

Te Maori came out of exhibition of the same name which took New York by storm during the late 1980s. The historic artefacts in this book demonstrate the power and the beauty of Maori art and include canoe prows, doorways, clubs, tiki, pendants, masks, amulets and boxes. This book has been out of print for four years; it contains 37 taonga Maori of importance, beauty and mana.

This edition is a reprint of the original 1986 edition.

78 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Born in Wellington in 1927 and educated in Christchurch, Brian Brake gained an affinity with the camera at a young age. After working with the National Film Unit in Wellington, he based himself in London during the 1950s and worked internationally as a freelance photographer, before being invited by Henri Cartier-Bresson to join the exclusive Magnum Photos agency in 1955. His 1961 photo essay Monsoon propelled him to world acclaim; in that year he moved to Hong Kong, where he was based until the mid-1970s, contributing regularly to magazines such as National Geographic and Life, and later making films. In 1974 he was commissioned by the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand to photograph indigenous art and artefacts from museums around the South Pacific. He returned to New Zealand to live in 1976, and his on-going involvement in exhibitions and publications helped Maori art to reach an international audience. Brian Brake died in Auckland in 1988.

Reviews

[Patrick Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this. Its interesting to compare it to the 'Maori Tribes of New Zeland' book I bought at the same time and just finished.

That book is very factual, informative, in a slightly decontextualised feeling way. It tip toes its way carefully through what is clearly still a rather tense history and present. It is a friendly book, clearly the product of many layers of revision and consensus. It is fair. It is also somewhat dull. Reading that book would give you the sense that the Maori are a rather friendly people with a complicated but tiresome history who have had a tough time and who are now doing better. There is nothing exceptionally interesting about the Maori as seen through that book.

*This* book is purely really moody shots of Maori art, mainly woodcarving and some Ponamu pieces, with context given through short contextual descriptions on the opposing pages. The art is really fucking good, the photography is goth as fuck, the book may be somewhat orientalist, fetishising a culture through its most charismatic pieces of art and draping the whole thing in the silky robes of mystery and time. But I am glad that it does because the impression of the Maori you get through it is that they are edgy cool as fuck balls out artistic geniuses doing mysterious stuff with wood and and caving each others heads in for magic green rocks, which I think I prefer to the first book.