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https://www.hcn.org/issues/58-2/the-little-known-photographer-who-documented-a-changing-okanogan-washington/>
"In 2002, filmmaker Beth Harrington visited Tacoma’s Washington State History
Museum during a road trip and saw an exhibit of Edward S. Curtis’ photographs.
It included work by some of his lesser-known contemporaries, and one, Frank
Matsura, “just leapt out at me,” Harrington said. His work “had a completely
different character.”
Matsura’s charisma and deep connection to his subjects illuminates his
black-and-white photographs. A Japanese immigrant, Matsura created images of
people he knew, even posing playfully alongside his subjects, a varied mix of
white settlers in Okanogan, Washington, and Indigenous people on the Colville
Indian Reservation.
From 1903 to 1913, Matsura lived and worked in Okanogan County, dying there at
age 39 from tuberculosis. Beyond those details and the thousands of images he
left behind, little of his life was documented. But over a century later, the
communities he photographed still remember him fondly.
“Frank Matsura is just somebody that you fall in love with,” Harrington said.
The documentarian moved to the Northwest from Boston in the early 2000s, but it
was nearly two decades before she could tackle Matsura’s enigmatic legacy. In
2025, she completed a feature-length documentary,
Our Mr. Matsura."
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
