Picturing Asia: Double Take - The Photography of Brian Brake and Steve McCurry

Stunning images, complex narratives, a fascinating conversation: pictures of Asia by two of the great masters of documentary photography. Picturing Asia: Double Take pairs and contrasts the work of New Zealander Brian Brake (1927-1988), and American Steve McCurry (born 1950). Brake, best known for his Monsoon photo essay in Life magazine in 1961, inspired McCurry with that series, who later became famous with his own photograph of Sharbat Gula, known as Afghan Girl and published 24 years later on the cover of National Geographic. Not just pictures of Asia, these photographs are also invitations to ‘picture this’ – to find the stories within.

Also at Te Uru on White Night: Sargam School of Music Performance

Image credit: 

Steve McCurry. Sharbat Gula, Afghan Girl, at Nasir Bagh refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan, 1984. “Along Afghanistan's War-torn Frontier”, National Geographic, Vol. 167, No. 6, June 1985. © Steve McCurry.

Brian Brake. Film director Akira Kurosawa standing before an image of his principal star, Toshiro Mifune, Tokyo, Japan, 1963. The Universal Magic of the Movies. Life, Vol. 55, No. 25, December 1963. 35mm transparency. Collection Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Gift of Wai-man Lau, 2001.