GEORGE MASA

McCue and Bonesteel deliver a thorough biography of photographer George Masa, who was as enigmatic as he was influential.

George Masa became famous for his artful photography and his role in the establishment of Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Appalachian Trail, but he remains a personally opaque figure. Born in Japan (likely Tokyo) in 1885, he emigrated to the United States in 1906 and made his way to Asheville, North Carolina in 1915. He began working as an “ironing man” at the upscale Grove Park Inn and considered many different professions, including barbering, mining, and wood carving, but by the 1920s he had become known as the finest photographer in the region, particularly of landscapes. An avid hiker and outdoorsman, he was also a devoted advocate for national parks and protected wilderness, and he expertly worked in trail measurement, map making, and geographic nomenclature. With the scrupulousness of investigative journalists, authors McCue and Bonesteel attempt to fill in the blanks of Masa’s mysterious life, about which even his closest friends were kept in the dark. What emerges is a fascinating picture of a man whose two obsessions in life—photography and nature—majestically dovetailed. (“The photographer showcased a landscape to a nation whose residents needed to imagine its beauty. Only in seeing its grandeur—in person or captured in a photograph—were politicians, citizens, philanthropists, and school children inspired to act.”) Moreover, the authors astutely convey the relentless bigotry the Japanese immigrant encountered in the interwar years; Masa was watched by the Bureau of Investigation (the precursor to the FBI) and targeted by the Ku Klux Klan. In many ways, Masa remains an unsolved riddle, but the efforts of McCue and Bonesteel to crack it are nothing less than remarkable. This a painstakingly meticulous study of a captivating subject and of the time in American history to which he belonged.

A rigorous and thrilling biography of an elusive artist.