OUR MR. MATSURA is the story of a Japanese-born photographer, Frank Matsura, who makes his way to rural Washington State in the early 1900s, endears himself to the community of miners, loggers, cowboys, and native peoples and becomes its leading chronicler and, arguably, its most beloved citizen. The son of a samurai, Matsura seems to have traveled to the Pacific Northwest in order to reveal himself through hundreds of self-portraits. In addition, several thousand images of his making depict life in frontier America and capture an interesting array of relationships and collaborations among Matsura and local people that raise questions about representation and reinvention, gender roles, power dynamics, and the notion of community.
