Sunday, September 13, 2026
3-5 PM
25 Dederick Street, Kingston, NY
Join us for our next Conversations panel to celebrate the publication of Dead Letter Room (The Eriskay Connection, 2026), the new book by artist Allie Tsubota. Tsubota will be joined by Dr. Maggie Mustard, Assistant Curator of Photography in The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints & Photographs at the New York Public Library. Their discussion will focus on the making of the project, the histories it engages, and the evolving relationship between photography, memory, and place. Tsubota, whose work is currently in the CPW Upstate Photography Biennial was a 2023 CPW Woodstock Artist-in-Residence.
Drawing on Dr. Mustard’s expertise in Japanese photography, Tsubota and Mustard will talk about how contemporary artists build upon and reimagine the photographic traditions that precede them. Together, they will consider the ways photographic books can function not only as repositories of images, but also as spaces for historical inquiry, personal reflection, and cultural memory. Following the conversation, attendees will have an opportunity to ask questions and celebrate the release of Dead Letter Room with the artist. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.
Dead Letter Room is a transhistorical correspondence with the late Japanese poet Hara Tamiki (1905–1951). Known for his slender output of prose during the pre-WWII and immediate postwar periods, Hara is most popularly admired for authoring “Summer Flowers,” a short story about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which he survived. Hara becomes both a historical figure and a collaborator, as the work explores how violence, memory, and loss are shaped through historical archives. Presented as a collection of thirteen imagined letters written between Allie Tsubota (US) and Hara, the correspondence elaborates on the legacy of atomic disaster, while weaving a pliable, potentially fictive narrative that crosses historical time.
Allie Tsubota (she/her) is an artist exploring intersections of race, visuality, and the formation of historical memory. Her work joins photography, video, photographic and cinematic archives, and text to examine the role of visual spectatorship across racialized space and historical time. Tsubota has received recognitions from Aperture and New York Foundation for the Arts, among others, and has been an artist-in-residence with Headlands Center for the Arts, the Studios at MASS MoCA, Visual Studies Workshop, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and ARCUS Project. Her works have been exhibited across the United States and Japan, and will be featured in a forthcoming solo exhibition at BAXTER ST at the Camera Club of New York in Fall 2026. Her first book, Dead Letter Room, was published by The Eriskay Connection in 2026. Tsubota holds an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design, and presently teaches photography at Parsons School of Design.
Maggie Mustard is Assistant Curator of Photography in the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs at the New York Public Library. She earned her PhD in Art History and Archaeology from Columbia University, where her dissertation focused on Japanese postwar photographer Kawada Kikuji. Previous professional roles include the Marcia Tucker Senior Research Fellow at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Visiting Assistant Professor at Wesleyan University. Recent exhibitions curated or co-curated at the NYPL include New York Subways 1977: Alen MacWeeney(2023), and The Awe of the Arctic: A Visual History (2024). Her most recent exhibition, The Art of Declaration, part of the NYPL’s initiative commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, is open now until January 2027.
Banner image © Allie Tsubota