A generously illustrated volume celebrates a remarkable artist.
America through an immigrant’s eye.
Japanese immigrant Frank S. Matsura (1873-1913) arrived in Seattle in 1901, and a few years later took a job as a handyman at a hotel in the small river town of Okanogan, in northern Washington. There he pursued a career in photography, leaving an abundant trove of images. Little is known of his early life: Born in Tokyo, after both parents died he lived with an uncle; by the time he left for America, he had learned English. In Okanogan, he bought an expensive camera, and the hotel’s owner gave him space for a darkroom. For the next 10 years, he documented life in his adopted home and beyond. Many in the local Indigenous population came to his studio for personal portraits; he photographed landscapes and celebrations; he photographed himself with his Native friends. He created and sold newly popular picture postcards. Art historian Holloman provides an introduction and conclusion to four essays analyzing and assessing the life and career of the enigmatic, energetic, and—judging from self-portraits—quite dapper Matsura. Laurie Arnold, a professor of Native American studies and a member of the Colville Confederated Tribe, gives an overview of tribal history and the establishment of the Colville reservation, praising the “dynamism and inclusivity” of Matsura’s images. Film and media studies scholar Glen Mimura analyzes Matsura’s photographic archive, “a comprehensive visual record of the region’s colonial settlement” including “construction of Conconully Dam, installation of electricity and waterworks, planting of orchards, extension of the railroads, and arrival of automobiles.” Unlike his contemporary, Edward S. Curtis, Matsura did not romanticize Native Americans; unlike Jacob Riis or Lewis Hine, his style, Mimura writes, was “neither aesthetically nor socially didactic,” but the expression of a truly “culturally hybrid, adaptive citizen.”
A generously illustrated volume celebrates a remarkable artist.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781797232812
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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