MoCP - Darkroom 2023

Allie Tsubota (United States, b. 1992), River Ōta, 2022  

As a fourth-generation Japanese American, Allie Tsubota is interested in histories of empire and assimilation within the Asian Pacific diaspora. Her series Dead Letter Room contains images as well as scans of fictional letters between Tsubota and the Japanese poet Hara Tamaki (1905–1951). The series contains archived images from the U.S. military in post-war Japan to interrogate the fabrication of memory and history. This image features the River Ōta, which runs through Hiroshima City and was a site for thousands of victims seeking refuge from the atomic bomb. 

Allie Tsubota is a recipient of Aperture and Google's Creator Lab Photo Fund (2021), the Lenscratch Student Prize First Place (2021), the Center for Photographic Art Artist Award (2021), the Henry Wolf Award for Photographic Excellence (2021), and RISD's Graduate Commons Award (2022 & 2021). She was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize (2022), the Magnum Counter Histories Award (2022), and the ChromaLuxe X Lucie Foundation Fine Art Award (2021). Tsubota has been included in exhibitions at the Center for Photographic Art, CA, and the Gelman Gallery, RI, among others. She received an honorable mention for the MoCP’s 2022 Snider Prize. 

https://www.allietsubota.com/