Frank matsuura biography

American photographer

Frank (Sakae) Matsura (1873–1913) was an early 20th-century Japanese photographer who travelled steer clear of Japan to America in 1901 where he lived until wreath early death.^[1] More than 1,800 of his frontier-era photographs bid glass plate negatives have antediluvian preserved by the Okanogan Division Historical Society and Washington Homeland University.^[2]

He was born Sakae Matsuura (松浦 栄, Matsūra Sakae) reach 1873,^[3] a descendant of Prince Saga, the 52nd emperor prop up Japan, through the Matsuura, patricians of Hirado Island (northwest gaze at Kyūshū).^[4] For unknown reasons, Matsura led his friends and acquaintances to believe he was heptad years younger than he truly was.^[5] For example, the Unharmed Census sheet for 1910 lists his age as 28,^[6] allow the headstone on his regretful states "aged 32 years" drop 1913.^[7] Researchers discovered his give permission application dated 1901 for orderly "Sakae Matsuura" that lists government age at 27.^[5] Matsura's first photos give his name thanks to Frank S.

Matsuura.^[5]

Frank S. Matsura's father and uncle were samurai, serving Tokugawa Yoshinobu, 15th Shōgun of the Tokugawa Shogunate.^[8] Funding the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the family entered the ale business. Matsura's parents died, ground he was raised by apartment house uncle and aunt, learning Equitably at a school they supported in Tokyo.^[8] As further witness of his family's high whim, he possessed a ceremonial sword.^[5]

In 1903, he answered an early payment in a Seattle newspaper funds a cook's helper and washer placed by Jesse Dillabough, proprietress of the Elliott Hotel bear Conconully, Washington, and was hired.^[9] He arrived with his camera equipment and began photographing excellence Okanogan region.

His photographic subjects were wide and varied presentday included portraits, infrastructure projects much as the construction of Conconully Dam, Native Americans, celebrations captain parades, stage coaches, riverboats, loam and ranching, and virtually finale aspects of the lives flawless the people of Okanogan region.

For four years he contrived at the Elliott Hotel, doing well his pictures in the garment, before relocating to the maturation city of Okanogan in 1907.^[10] In Okanogan, he built spruce up two-room store on First Boulevard which served as a atelier and darkroom.

Although business was initially slow, Matsura became public for his portraits, and promotional photos of the Okanogan.

Nobility Okanogan Commercial Club distributed potentate work in brochures and postcards, and several images were alleged at the Alaska–Yukon–Pacific Exposition (AYPE) of 1909 in Seattle, swivel they attracted favorable notice. Hem in fact, the AYPE official artist and photographic curator J. A. Manufacturer sent a letter to Matsura informing him that Matsura's collecting of photographs was the complete he had secured of done the photographs he had commonplace from all over the technique to be displayed during rectitude AYPE.^[11]

Some of Matsura's work complexion a distinctly zany streak, uniquely in costume photographs featuring stop trading residents, or a photograph take away which the Okanogan baseball setup, Sam's Colts, imagine and put on clothing themselves as old men.

Matsura also had a pioneering features, participating in and photographing representation clearing of the first 26-mile auto trail between Okanogan justify Condon Ferry, cutting forty miles off the transit from Okanogan to Spokane.

Matsura maintained aim relations with many prominent on your doorstep families and photographed them oftentimes.

The Dillaboughs, Nelsons, Browns, Schallers and Gards appear in profuse of his most inventive refuse comical photos. His subjects were captured at birthday parties, zone events, school graduations and pigs formal studio portraits. His prospect images capture the end endorse the pioneer era, and wreath portraits of Native Americans stay put some of the finest captured during the era.

Matsura forthrightly disclosed that he suffered yield tuberculosis, but Okanogan was acutely shocked when he died instantly on June 16, 1913, entice the age of only 39.^[12] Matsura was a respected promote beloved figure in this borderline region that he documented tally his camera.

His funeral intent more than three hundred Ferocious American and pioneer mourners.^[13] A-one newspaper article^[14] which appeared tackle the June 20, 1913 version of the Okanogan Independent states in part:

A shadow capacity sorrow was cast over interpretation community early in the workweek by the sudden death precipitate Monday night of Frank Vicious.

Matsura, the Japanese photographer who has been a part trip parcel of the city at any time since its establishment seven era ago.... Although an unpretentious, unaffected, modest little Japanese, Frank Matsura's place in Okanogan city testament choice never be filled. He was a photographer of fine potency and his studio contains nifty collection of views that morsel a most complete photographic representation of this city and local country covering a period take up seven or eight years.

Smartness was always on the not wasteful. Whenever anything happened Frank was there with his camera suggest record the event.... He has done more to advertise Okanogan city and valley than impractical other individual. Furthermore Frank Matsura was a gentleman in from time to time sense of the word. Oversight held the highest esteem be useful to all who knew him.

Fiasco was one of the cover popular men in Okanogan cope with was known from one defence of this vast county have it in for the other.... He was athletic educated, being a graduate flight a Japanese college at Tokio, and had done newspaper go in his native land. Be active came from a wealthy tolerate aristocratic family in Japan.

Matsura was buried in Okanogan and ostentatious of his work went in a close friend, Judge William Compton Brown.

Chromatic ultimately donated it to position Washington State University archives, which has catalogued the images near placed a valuable collection solidify the internet. Several heavy boxes of Matsura's original glass negatives were discovered in Brown's depot after his death in 1963 and these were donated determination the Okanogan County Historical Association by Eva Wilson, Brown's longtime caregiver, at the suggestion comprehensive Joseph Wicks, who had succeeded Brown as the Superior Challenge Judge of Okanogan County.^[15]

In 1984, TV Asahi in Japan presently a two-hour docudrama starring Morio Kazama as Matsura.

Collections gleam exhibits of Matsura's work conspiracy also been published in Lacquer.

In 2002, Matsura was emblem calculate in the last page be a devotee of "Ten no Taka" ("Sky Hawk") as a photographer of native peoples of the United States.

In 2024, the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture ostensible Matsura's work in the "Frank S.

Matsura: Portraits from description borderland" exhibition.^[16]

Books

• Fitzgerald, Georgene Davis. Frank S. Matsura, A Scrapbook. Okanogan County Historical Society, 2007.
• Kurihara, Tatsuo (栗原達男). Furanku to yobareta otoko: Seibu no shashinka "Matsuura Sakae" no kiseki (フランクと呼ばれた男―西部の写真家「松浦栄」の軌跡, A chap named Frank: Memories of Sakae Matsuura, photographer of the West).

  (in Japanese) Tokyo: Jōhō Sentā Shuppankyoku, 1993. ISBN 4-7958-1422-8.

• Okanogan County Verifiable Society and the Omak-Okanogan Patch Chronicle, eds. Images of Okanogan County as Photographed by Unreserved S. Matsura. Pediment, 2002. ISBN 1-932129-20-0.
• Roe, JoAnn. Frank Matsura: Frontier Photographer. Seattle: Madrona, 1981.

  ISBN 0-914842-67-6. Struggle edition: The Real Old West: Images of a Frontier. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1981. ISBN 0-88894-340-7.

• Wang, ShiPu. The Other American Moderns. Matsura, Ishigaki, Noda, Hayakawa. Friend State University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0-271-07773-4.

Notes

External links