Slight of frame and often sickly from chronic respiratory issues, Japanese immigrant George Masa hiked and climbed the rugged and often unchartered terrain of the Appalachian Mountains in order to capture extraordinary photographic images.
In his 2022 book, “George Masa’s Wild Vision,” author Brent Martin writes about the photographer that history would identify as the “Ansel Adams of the Smokies”:
“When the young Masahara Iizuka [aka George Masa] stepped onto the California shore in the early 1900s, could he have imagined that within the next 25 years he would emerge on the other side of the country as one of southern Appalachia’s greatest photographers, along with being one of its most significant advocates for protection of its wild places?”
As so many did before him and have done after, Masa fell in love with the awe-inspiring natural beauty of the cliffs and hills and peaks of Western North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains, part of the range that actually extends for almost 2,000 miles from the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador to central Alabama in the United States. In 1915, Masa made his way to Asheville, North Carolina, where he worked for a time at the prestigious Grove Park Inn and began to dabble in photography, first taking photos of affluent and sometimes famous guests.
But the scenery that surrounded him beckoned. When he befriended writer and outdoorsman Horace Kephart, Masa truly began “an artistic and visionary journey into the soul of some of the oldest mountains on earth,” Martin says. By lugging his heavy and cumbersome large-format photography equipment through densely wooded gaps and steep wilderness, Masa would achieve “a creative rendering of their [Appalachian Mountains’] light, their magnificence, their lushness.”
Masa’s sometimes vivid, sometimes ethereal photographs convey his enchantment with the area’s scenic beauty, which included vast, stunning views and distinct flora and fauna. He reportedly spent weeks measuring, mapping, and photographing, and became known throughout the Western North Carolina region for spending long days and nights on cold ridges waiting for what he called “the precise atmospheric moment,” meaning ideal lighting, cloud configuration, sunrise, and sunset. Masa was often alone in the wilderness, working to best articulate through black-and-white photographs the dramatic contrasts of shadows and light.
Martin, who spent the better part of 2020 writing “George Masa’s Wild Vision,” as well as visiting sites throughout Western North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains that Masa photographed, commented:
“I think Masa’s photographs were seen as artistic and significant due to his patience to wait for and to know the right light, and for his ability to capture a landscape within a particular moment that gave it depth and dimension. I think that is why people compare him to Adams.”
Masa kept track of the miles of his excursions via a homemade bicycle-wheel odometer and a map with pushpins, according to Martin. He took possibly thousands of shots. Although many of his negatives have been lost, hundreds were made into prints, including 97 used in a Highlands, North Carolina, promotional booklet published in 1930. Some of the splendid scenes he captured, including Dry Falls, and Whiteside and Satulah Mountains, are on permanent display in a Highlands Historical Society exhibit.
Martin describes Masa as “productive, prolific, and indefatigable,” having contributed photographs not only for travel promotional pieces but also for postcard production, and to various publications, including newspapers (The New York Times) and magazines (National Geographic).
In 1928, Masa prepared a book of photographs of the Smoky Mountains, part of the Appalachians, which he sent to the White House as a gift for first lady Grace Coolidge.
Western Carolina University, in Cullowhee, North Carolina, which has archived some of Masa’s photography in a special collection, noted that Masa “hiked the woods with Kephart and with national park officials on their inspection trips and provided photographs to stir public interest [in creating Great Smoky Mountains National Park].”
Although Masa was only 45 years old when he died of a respiratory illness in 1933, Americans were already appreciating his photography. A peak in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is named Masa Knob in his honor.
