“Frank S. Matsura: Iconoclast Photographer of the American West” shines a lightweight on Matsura’s mysterious and significant profession

How does one assemble a guide of essays about an artist whose life story is riddled with gaps? This is the query the essayists grappled with all through Frank S. Matsura: Iconoclast Photographer of the American West, edited by Art History professor Michael Holloman and revealed by Princeton Architectural Press. The guide’s topic, Frank S. Matsura, was a photographer who labored from 1903-1913 in Okanogan, a county in Washington that lies partially on the Colville Reservation and has been residence to many Indigenous tribes. Matsura emigrated from Japan as a younger man and made a residing working a portrait studio and photographing landscapes for postcards. His profession was lower quick when he died at age thirty-nine as a result of tuberculosis. The essayists level out that we are going to most likely by no means know Matsura’s motivation for emigrating, nor will we all know his motivation behind changing into an expert photographer. Little can be recognized of his photographic coaching—as identified within the guide, we solely know that he purchased his tools proper earlier than he began working (he primarily used a 5″×7″ field digital camera). 

Due to scant details about his life, the essayists principally take a look at the context surrounding Matsura’s profession and at his work itself. They look at the historical past of Okanogan and the peoples who’ve known as it residence, and the historical past of trick pictures in Japan that probably knowledgeable Matsura’s work. Maki Fukuoka, for instance, describes how pictures in Asakusa (a district in Tokyo) was utilized in efficiency artwork, which is analogous to performative facets of Matsura’s pictures. Matsura’s pictures is fantastically reproduced within the guide and contains sequence of portraits, a lot of that are humorous or playful, taken each within the artist’s studio and in Okanogan. Landscapes and different nature pictures are additionally featured, a lot of which served as commercials to potential settlers. In readers’ minds, a lot of Matsura’s pictures might evoke modern selfies individuals take with smartphones. His pictures really feel very informal regardless of being skilled, a top quality that the essayists focus on at size. 

In the introduction, Holloman compares Matsura to Edward S. Curtis, one among his well-known contemporaries, who additionally made his profession photographing Indigenous individuals. That comparability is then explored by the essayists all through the guide. Curtis wished his topics to put on clothes that he deemed “authentic” even once they dressed in another way in on a regular basis life. He even supplied them with costumes he felt would look Native American to a white viewers. In distinction, the individuals who got here to Matsura’s studio dressed the way in which they wished to be dressed. Also, Curtis as soon as eliminated a clock from one among his pictures to be able to body Native Americans as relics or a really perfect from premodern instances. In Matsura’s work, the staging and props he supplied to his topics have been their alternative to make use of. It appears such a easy factor, however the contributors to this guide spotlight how depicting individuals as they need to be depicted is definitely radical. 

Regarding clothes and props, the enjoyable Matsura was clearly having in lots of the pictures (he took many self-portraits and continuously posed along with his buddies and topics) was additionally emphasised by the essayists. For instance, his pictures options parts of drag. Women could be photographed spending time with their buddies whereas sporting males’s garments, and in a single sequence of pictures, Matsura swaps conventionally masculine and female hats with one among his feminine buddies. In Fukuoka’s essay, the drag parts and others are seen via the lens of an op-ed by Matsura, which was a uncommon look into his thought course of. In this surprisingly trendy opinion piece he wrote in 1905 for the Okanogan Record, Matsura defined his perception that Japanese Buddhist and Confucian traditions contribute to the oppression of girls. He additionally shared that all through Japanese historical past, there have been instances during which ladies have been educated alongside males and even hunted with them. He wrote that he hoped ladies would have alternatives like this within the United States.  

On the one hand, Matsura’s work serves as a time capsule and window into the historical past of Okanogan and the Indigenous peoples of the Northwestern Plateau. But on the opposite hand, this guide exhibits that Matsura and his work are nonetheless a part of a residing historical past. Beth Harrington, in her essay, realized this when she visited the realm and located many individuals who suppose fondly of Matsura even after so many a long time have handed. Notably, one Okanogan citizen even wrote in her household historical past about her relations being photographed in Matsura’s flower backyard. 

Frank S. Matsura: Iconoclast Photographer of the American West is a crucial guide not solely as a result of it’s a fascinating overview of Matsura’s work, life, and neighborhood, but in addition as a result of it exhibits how analyzing an area artist can problem prevailing narratives about each artwork and other people. While studying this guide, I stored questioning concerning the untold variety of artists like Matsura who have been well-known of their native communities however who’ve but to be spotlighted, and about all of the issues they may additionally train us.