Our Mr. Matsura

In the early 1900s, Frank Matsura, the son of a samurai, journeyed from Japan to live in Washington State, eventually calling remote Okanogan County home. Here he set up shop and began photographing settlers, immigrants and the peoples of the twelve Columbia Plateau tribes. He also revealed facets of himself through scores of unusual self-portraits and playful, skit-like photography, in which he posed with friends and neighbors in familial and intimate ways. In so doing, he built social bridges where previously none had existed. Matsura offered remarkable retellings of rural life and gave people new ways of thinking about themselves. Today his photos raise questions about representation and reinvention, life in a transitional “borderland,” gender roles in the West, and the very notion of community. A century later, the people of the Okanogan still have pride and a sense of connection to him and the work he created.