Exhibit Features Frank S. Matsura’s Nuanced Portraits, Challenging Perceptions of the American West

PORTLAND, Oregon — A new exhibition, Frank S. Matsura: Portraits From the Borderland, opened 27 September 2025 at the Japanese American Museum of Oregon (JAMO), offering a compelling look at the cultural confluence of early 20th-century Okanogan County, Washington.

The traveling exhibition, organized by the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, runs through 8 February 2026 and centers on the work of Japanese photographer Frank Sakae Matsura (1873-1913). Matsura’s work, created between 1903 and 1913, documents local life but is particularly renowned for its powerful and nuanced portraits of the Indigenous people of the Columbia River Plateau.

Matsura settled in the newly incorporated Okanogan County in 1903 and quickly became a trusted figure in the community. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who often presented Indigenous communities as a “vanishing race,” Matsura’s images capture his subjects as modern people actively adapting to the times.

“This exhibition challenges our ideas of what life was like in the rural West just after these territories achieved statehood,” said Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong, executive director of JAMO. “It asks us to reconsider who was here, shaping this part of the country at the turn of the 20th century, and the diversity of cultures and interactions that made up these communities.”

The exhibition will feature Matsura’s photographs alongside period-specific regalia from the Columbia River Plateau region, providing context for one of the most visually potent collections of Northwest Indigenous peoples from that era.

Exhibit: Frank S. Matsura: Portraits From the Borderland, Japanese American Museum of Oregon (JAMO), 27 September 2025 through 8 February 2026.