State of the Art
A group blog from the editors of American Photo magazine.

May 11, 2007

Embracing Mexico

The acclaimed but underrated photographer Mariana Yampolsky made a career out of obliterating the distinction between high art and low art. She also championed the common people, particularly those who lived in the land she adopted as her artistic backdrop: indigenous rural Mexico. And like many other U.S. visual artists who drew inspiration from the Mexican life stream, Yampolsky left a remarkable record of her time south of the border — as evidenced in a new exhibition at the UBS Gallery, 1285 Avenue of the Americas, in Midtown Manhattan.

The show, called Embracing Mexico: Mariana Yampolsky, Life and Art, offers a cross-section of the artist's interests from the 1930s through the '90s: her evocative photographs of rural people that reflect both struggle and dignity (such as "Mujeres Mazuhuas," above); her bold linoleum block prints created for various publications (she was also a book editor and curator), and objects from her extensive Mexican folk-art collection, including charming bric-a-brac (e.g., "Folk art whistle in the form of a duck") and several Mexican masks (one of her specialties was the garb of Mexican pro wrestlers).

All of which belies the fact that Yampolsky was not Mexican, but born into a family of artists and intellectuals in Chicago in 1925. After graduating from the University of Chicago and discovering photography, she decided to follow the path of American photographers like Edward Weston, Tina Modotti, and Paul Strand to head south for visual inspiration. She emigrated and became a Mexican citizen in 1954.

The Embracing Mexico show includes several large-scale prints by others who inspired Yampolsky (regrettably omitting Weston and Modotti): They include Strand, Manuel Álvarez Bravo and wife Lola Alvarez Bravo (Yampolsky's personal mentor), Flor Garduño, and talented followers like Alicia Ahumada.

But the centerpiece is Yampolsky's photography, which largely focuses on the indigenous Mazuhua people who lived in the rural regions outside Mexico City. Yampolsky had a particular affinity with the women and children of this culture — many abandoned by men who went to Mexico City to work construction jobs and never returned — who often eked out a living selling trinkets at markets, which Yampolsky avidly collected on her journeys. She befriended these women and hung out with them in their homeland. Her artful, empathetic shots of both the old (such as "Waiting on the Priest," above right and the young (like "El Mandril (The Apron)," left) show a penetrating view of humanity that is both specific and timeless — a gritty, beautiful world in which high art and low art simply coexist.
— Jack Crager