Mariana Yampolsky
A significant figure in 20th-century Mexican photography, she specialized in capturing photos of common people in everyday situations in the rural areas of the country.
[4] Her father, Oscar Yampolsky, was a Russian Jewish sculptor and painter who had immigrated to the United States to escape anti-Semitism.
[3][6] While in college, Yampolsky first learned about the Taller de Gráfica Popular after she attended a campus presentation run by artists who had been a part of the group.
[4] This was an organization dedicated to creating and promoting art with a political slant, especially anti-fascism, for the masses, founded in 1937 by Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O'Higgins and Luis Arenal.
[6] Her work with the Taller, as well as her relationships with the other members helped her "fall in love" with Mexico, its people, its folk art its vegetation, politics and culture.
[6] In 1951 she was a founder-member of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana at the National School for Painting, Sculpture and Graphics.
[3] For three years in the late 1960s, she traveled Mexico's rural areas to photograph for the Fondo de la Plástica Mexicana publishing house.
These pictures include images of murals, the work of José Guadalupe Posada, European painting in Mexico and folk art.
She worked as an illustrator for the newspaper "El Día" in Mexico City and a publication of the Mexican Ministry of Communications called "Annals.
Through the rest of the decade she edited various art books related to Mexican artists, food, toys, customs and ceremonies.
[2] Yampolsky's influences as a photographer include Tina Modotti, Manuel and Lola Álvarez Bravo, Nacho López and Héctor García.
[9] The classic division of Mexican art into pre Hispanic, colonial and post Independence periods appears frequently in her work along with classic Mexican images such as cacti, agave plants, horses, field workers, masks, women working and skulls with themes such as scarcity, death and poverty.
[2] These photographs reflect her family's global humanism and anthropological background with important examples being The Exterminating Angel (1991); Waiting for the Priest (1987); Orange Stand (1969); Stacked Piñata Pots (1988) and Jailhouse Patio (1987), with the aim of showing the various causes and aspects of poverty in Mexico.
It is led by her husband, Arjen van der Sluis, who donated their house in the Tlalpan borough of Mexico City to the foundation.
