FRANK S. MATSURA

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.