Book Review
George Masa’s Wild Vision: A Japanese Immigrant Imagines Western North Carolina by Brent Martin, 2022, Hub City Press
In the book Martin retraces some of Masa’s photography treks. In the process he tries to give us biographical information on Masa, and he verbally compares the Western North Carolina vistas that Masa saw and how it exists today a century after Masa walked through these mountains.
The book has sections on The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the Highlands Plateau, Chimney Rock/Hickory Nut Gorge, and other images. Masa’s photos can be loosely divided into two categories: works Masa made as an enthusiastic explorer and images he was hired to make.
George Masa (1881-1933) was a member of the Carolina Mountain Club and friends with noted naturalist, Horace Kephart. In conjunction with Kephart he blazed hiking trails still popular today and participated in early planning for the Appalachian Trail route and the boundaries of The Great Smoky Mountain National Park.
Many of Masa’s other images were done for others. In Wild Vision this includes the Highlands area photographs. These images were made to promote the area for the then new tourist trade. Most of the photographs included in the book features pure landscapes including mountain vistas and forest landscapes. Though there is one image of the Highlands Estate golf course and fairway).
George Masa (1881-1933) was born Masahara Iizuka and immigrated to the United States from Japan around age 26, in 1906 or 7. His original goal was to study engineering. For whatever reason he abandoned that goal. In 1915 Masa came to Asheville, NC and found work at The Grove Park Inn which had opened two years earlier in 1913. He worked at the Inn until 1915 when he went into partnership with the photographer Herbert Pelton at Pelton Studios which Masa renamed Plateau Studios.
Masa’s biography has many blanks. Among those is where Masa learned photography in Japan, where photography while popular was relatively new, or did he start photography in the United States. Wherever he learned the process, his compositions relate to traditional Japanese art. Many of his photographs have a flattened effect with a branch or rock in the foreground to suggest depth.
One issue is that Masa’s negatives and prints were sold off after his death. Many ending up in the Ball Studio archives, which are now in the collection of the University of North Carolina-Asheville. In 1994, the “Coming to Light” exhibition focused on Masa’s Highlands, NC works. It was only later that Masa’s works in the Ball Collection were identified using his numbering system written on the negatives.
Masa’s true love was the mountain landscape and much of his surviving work reflects that love which is reflected in Martin’s book. Martin retraces Masa’s photography treks, both work for commercial purposes such as images around Highlands, NC which in the 1920s was undergoing tremendous development.
One question raised in the book is what drew Masa to the Chimney Rock and Hickory Nut Gap areas. Based on my work with the Douglas Ellington materials, I think I know the answer. Ellington was an architect who designed the First Baptist Church in Asheville, Asheville High School, and the Asheville City Building. Ellington also designed the entry gate for Chimney Rock Park and as part of that proposed, I am not sure he was serious, a fairy tale castle for the top of Chimney Rock. To illustrate the idea, he took a 16 x 20 print of Masa’s image of Chimney Rock and painted the castle on top. Masa had photographed Ellington’s buildings as work for hire.
“Bridal Veil Falls” photograph by George Masa, 1929, collection of Highlands Historical Society
In 1994 the Asheville Art Museum mounted an exhibition of works by Masa and his one-time partner, Herbert Pelton along with rephotographs by Gill Leebrick (Masa) and Ben Porter (Pelton). At the time we only knew the bare bones of Masa’s life story. In 2001, William Hart wrote an article on Masa for the Journal “May We All Remember Well.” Paul Bonesteel produced “The Mystery of George Masa” in 2002. Now we can mostly chart the journey of Masa from Japan to California to Asheville. And now we have “George Masa’s Wild Vision” by Brent Martin published in 2022.
Still, we know little about Masa’s personal life beyond his involvement with the Carolina Mountain Club and his friendship with Horace Kephart. How did he feel about being one of the few, only, Japanese American in Western North Carolina. Did he have a romantic relationship (though miscegenation laws would have presented problems with that). In the end we know more about Masa’s work and journeys, but the mystery of George Masa remains.
