ASHEVILLE, N.C. (WLOS) — George Masa was a Japanese commercial photographer living and working in Asheville at the turn of the last century, and he’s well-known for photographing and mapping out the Smoky Mountains.

Much like Ansel Adams’ photographs of Yosemite, Masa’s landscapes of the Smoky Mountains helped the U.S. Department of the Interior decide to establish them as the Great Smoky National Park.

But as one local photography historian has discovered, Masa’s work was critical in capturing life all over Asheville in the 1920s and 1930s.

“He’s more than the Smokies. He’s more than the Appalachian Trail,” said Angelyn Whitmeyer of Masa, a photography historian who has done extensive research on Masa’s landscape and commercial photographic work. “As important as those are, he also did all this other photography — and he did it well.”

Today, we all have easy-to-use cameras in our hands at all times, but in the early 1900s, the only cameras that existed required a great deal of expertise and darkrooms with photographic chemistry to process and develop the pictures.

HISTORICAL MARKER HONORS PHOTOGRAPHER WHOSE WORK PROMOTED ASHEVILLE, MOUNTAINS

If one wanted a photograph of anything, a photographer would have to be hired. To get a picture of one’s family members, a trip to a photographer’s portrait studio was in order to pose for portraits.

George Masa was often hired as a commercial photographer throughout Western North Carolina by area Chambers Of Commerce to promote tourism.

Whitmeyer has created an online collection of his photography, which can be found at georgemasaphotodatabase.com.

“I had done some research and found out about him as a photographer in Western North Carolina,” Whitmeyer said. “I decided to create a database that lists everything I could find — and found quite a few photographs; a total of about 1,800 different images.”

She said that while his work photographing what would become the GSMNP is important, the often overlooked work he did commercially — photographing ribbon cuttings of new buildings, parties and events from Asheville and the surrounding areas offers a glimpse into life here during the Roaring Twenties.

“Much of Masa’s work was in the Smokies and the Appalachian Trail and contributions he made there,” Whitmeyer said. “My piece is to say, he did more than that. He was the photographer of his time — the mid-twenties and early thirties.”

She says he was often hired to photograph events of historical significance at that time, such as the construction of new buildings around the downtown area.

“He’s taking things that were historically important at the time, that we can look at now and relate to and say, ‘That building is still here,'” Whitmeyer said. “He’s documented his own time, and as we find more of these photographs, we can learn more about that timeframe — the 1920s and 1930s.”

To view the George Masa Photo Database, click HERE.