Matsura lived and worked in Okanogan County between 1903 and 1913, ultimately succumbing to tuberculosis at the young age of 39. Beyond these biographical details and the thousands of images he left behind, much of his life remains undocumented. Yet, more than a century later, the communities he so vividly captured still hold him in fond remembrance. "Frank Matsura is just somebody that you fall in love with," Harrington shared. After relocating to the Pacific Northwest from Boston in the early 2000s, Harrington spent nearly two decades before embarking on the ambitious project of illuminating Matsura’s enigmatic legacy through her feature-length documentary, Our Mr. Matsura, which was completed in 2025.

The title, Harrington explained, stems from the idea that "everyone has a point of entry" into understanding Matsura. "Everyone thinks they have a little window into who he is," she elaborated, "and there’s a collective sense of who he is because of those little impressions." This sentiment resonated deeply with Douglas Woodrow, who was among the approximately 300 people who gathered at the beautifully restored Omak Theater last September for a screening of the film.

"I grew up in Okanogan," Woodrow recounted to High Country News, "and the local newspaper would post pictures of the past, usually by Frank Matsura." As a boy in the late 1950s, Woodrow vividly remembers biking to the very locations depicted in these vintage photographs, marveling at the dramatic transformations over time. He particularly recalled imagining the majestic three-story Bureau Hotel, which tragically burned down in 1924, as having once provided "a bit of elegance in an otherwise dusty little town." Returning to Okanogan decades later, Woodrow found himself re-engaging with "Frank," as his contemporary admirers affectionately refer to him. While volunteering with the Okanogan County Historical Society, he stumbled upon "a literal shoebox" filled with unprocessed Matsura photographs. When meticulously sequenced, these images chronicled the 1910 construction of the Conconully Dam, an early project undertaken by the Bureau of Reclamation on Salmon Creek. This discovery "just lit me up," Woodrow expressed, leading him to present these historical photographs to various community groups, marking his first significant Matsura-related endeavor.

His profound fascination with Matsura’s life and work propelled him to Tokyo, where he visited Matsura’s birthplace alongside his friend and fellow enthusiast, Tetsuo Kurihara, a Japanese photographer who had initially met Woodrow in Okanogan during a research trip. Back in the United States, Woodrow dedicated himself to preserving Matsura’s legacy, spearheading the creation of an interpretive site near Matsura’s former studio and initiating a walking tour featuring 21 mural-sized reproductions of his photographs. "His social mobility was extraordinary," Woodrow observed, highlighting Matsura’s remarkable ability to be "included in just about everything that happened in town, by all the social strata" – from tribal members and newly arrived white businessmen to miners and saloon patrons.

Randy Lewis, a respected Wenatchi (P’Squosa) elder and member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, is among the many descendants of Matsura’s subjects who appear in Our Mr. Matsura. Lewis has been actively involved in community efforts to screen the film regionally, including co-hosting a memorable "barn screening" in Winthrop, Washington, which was followed by a traditional salmon bake. His family’s narrative serves as a powerful testament to the enduring presence of the world Matsura so artfully captured. The film prominently features a photograph of Lewis’s great-uncle, Sam George, alongside his family in a buckboard wagon – a vehicle Lewis humorously likens to "the F-250 of the time." Lewis shared with High Country News that this photograph hung in the family home during his tenure as caretaker in George’s final years. "He’d be sitting there staring at that picture," Lewis recalled, explaining that looking at it "kept his mind going" by helping him remember the names and birthdays of everyone depicted in the wagon.

Sam George lived to be 108 years old. His birth in 1860 predated the establishment of the Colville Indian Reservation in 1872, and during his exceptionally long life, he witnessed significant historical shifts, including the reservation’s reduction, the allotment era, and the influx of gold-seekers and homesteaders. He and his family, including Lewis, continued to follow traditional seasonal fishing practices, maintaining a fishing platform at Celilo Falls until the construction of The Dalles Dam in 1957 submerged the site, forever altering one of the continent’s most vital fishing grounds. Lewis noted that Matsura arrived on the reservation during a period of profound cultural transition, a time when "both cultures," Native and settler, were actively evolving. "We were into a new century, and he was capturing that," Lewis remarked, emphasizing that Matsura’s focus was not on "the death toll of the Indians," but rather on "life going on."

Our Mr. Matsura offers a compelling portrait of Okanogan County itself, as much as it delves into Matsura’s life. Harrington masterfully illustrates the isolated, rugged beauty of a landscape that remains remarkably similar to how it appeared when Matsura first arrived. Jean Berney, a seasoned rancher and farmer from just outside Conconully, a place she describes as "off the beaten track for a lot of people," affectionately calls it "a beautiful country." An enrolled member of the Colville Confederated Tribes, Berney married into a non-Native cattle-ranching family and subsequently built her own successful herd, earning national recognition as a conservation-minded rancher deeply committed to the 4-H program. Her property once housed The Conconully Naturpathy Institute, more commonly known as Casselmann’s Sanitarium, where Dr. Casselmann, a German immigrant, treated tuberculosis patients beginning in 1906. It is widely believed that Matsura himself may have been a patient, with the region’s dry climate potentially being a significant draw for him.

Berney often contemplates Matsura’s journeys across this challenging terrain. "Did he ever talk to Dr. Casselmann about his condition? How long was he sick?" she mused. "We wonder about Frank and everything that happened a long time ago, and we can’t ask," she added wistfully. Our Mr. Matsura contributes to an expanding body of work dedicated to the photographer, building upon the efforts of dedicated volunteers at the Okanogan County Historical Society and the academic contributions of Michael Holloman, a tenured art professor at Washington State University. In 2023, Holloman co-curated an exhibition of Matsura’s work for Spokane’s Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture and, in 2025, published the insightful book, Frank S. Matsura: Iconoclast Photographer of the American West. "We need people to be like Frank right now," Holloman, himself an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, stated, urging viewers to "engage multiple communities and be able to find life, vibrancy, in a world that is in transformation and change."

The wide release of Our Mr. Matsura was initially slated for The American Experience program, but federal funding cuts last summer led to the discontinuation of the long-running PBS series. Despite this setback, Harrington remains optimistic that the film will find its audience through film festivals, streaming platforms, and special screenings, echoing the success of the Omak screening last fall. However, she acknowledges that the path forward will be considerably more challenging. "There’s a lot of worthy things that we can’t put a dollar value to," she reflected, emphasizing, "These stories… we’re poorer for them when we don’t have them." At the Omak screening, Harrington received heartfelt thanks for "mirroring" the very trust that Matsura cultivated with his subjects in the community over a century prior. Yet, the filmmaker was quick to reciprocate the sentiment. "The story is not just about Frank and his charisma and his incredible body of work," she stated, "It’s about the way people uphold his memory and still talk about him 112 years after his death."