Mariana Yampolsky

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Mariana Yampolsky was born near Chicago in 1925 and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1948. She first visited Mexico in 1944, moving there a few years later. She was soon a member of the Popular Graphic Arts Workshop, working as a printer and engraver, and she was the first woman elected to their board of directors. In the late 1940s, she began experimenting with photography, taking her first class from Lola Álvarez Bravo. She worked for a number of years with the Ministry of Education, publishing a children’s magazine series. Her works have appeared in over 45 solo exhibitions and 110 group exhibitions all over the world, and her photographs reside in 16 major collections. Mariana Yampolsky died on May 2, 2002. “Mariana Yampolsky senses the subjects of her photographs even before seeing them. Her vision becomes her point of view, her storehouse of ideas, the way in which she faces life. Strict with herself, after a long laborious journey, she has the enormous satisfaction of having dedicated her life to what she loves most: Mexico and its people.” (Elena Poniatowska, Imagen memoria/Image Memory, Centro de la Imagen, 1998) Mariana Yampolsky died on May 2, 2002.