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Masa’s Wild Vision
Written By: Stuart Ferguson - Shakespeare and Company | Issue: August - 2022
A new volume explores George Masa’s rugged travels through the wild spaces of Western North Carolina. You can learn more at the September 8 Zahner Lecture Series, set for 6:00 P.M. at the Highlands Nature Center.
George Masa’s Wild Vision: A Japanese ImmigrantImagines Western North Carolina by Brent Martin hasHighlands connections and is a great new book aboutconservation, photography and history.Masa (1881-1933) was born in Japan, but by 1915 was inAsheville. He got a job at the Grove Park Inn, first in theirlaundry but then quickly became the hotel’s photographer. SoonMasa had his own studio in Asheville, taking photos and sellinghis postcards of the local scenery. He fell in love with oursouthern mountains and spent all his free time capturing theirbeauty on film.He became fast friends with Horace Kephart, author of OurSouthern Highlanders and an early advocate for a national parkin the Smokies.George Masa’s Wild Vision is not a straightforward biographyof the photographer (which is in the works) but rather Mr.Martin’s meditations on the mountains’ influence on Masa, andhis on them.In 1929 Highlands Inn owner Frank Cook hired Masa to takephotos promoting the area. Thanks to Cook’s daughter, BeverlyCook Quin, those images are now owned by the HighlandsHistorical Society. Cullasaja Gorge, Whiteside and the then-new Highlands Country Club are among the local subjects ofMasa’s artistry with the camera.Hub City Press in Spartanburg is to be congratulated forpublishing such a beautiful tome. Masa’s images are reproducedin all their magnificence and intelligence, the design is greatand the paper amazing.Mr. Martin’s prose is pretty amazing, too. A resident ofCowee Community and a noted conservationist, he is cur-rently the Executive Director of the Blue Ridge Bartram TrailConservancy, as well as being a published poet and essayist.With his wife, Angela, he owns Alarka Expeditions, which takeyou on wonderful treks.In fact, Mr. Martin recently told me that the HighlandsBiological Station “provided housing and a setting for me towork for a solid week on the Highlands chapter. It seemedlike the perfect place to think about Masa on the HighlandsPlateau.”Mr. Martin is delivering the September 8 talk on Masa in theZahner Lecture Series at the Highlands Nature Center at 6:00P.M. If I were you, I’d go.
by Stuart Ferguson, Local Historian,Co-Owner Shakespeare & Company
