Speech for "Homage to Mariana Yampolsky"



Twenty years of close relationship don’t let me talk about Mariana Yampolsky with distance. Work was a
life generator for her, and one of the strongest links among us.

On her working tables she always had letters, cards, invitations, many of them for Francisco Reyes Palma
who is also obsessed with keeping papers; there was also little heaps of 120 films to develop, TX, TM, HP5,
FP4, the brand or sensitivity did not matter, she knew how to shoot and she did it accurately.

Her greatest desire was to make good pictures, overwhelming images. She was perfectly capable of judging
photographic techniques, but that was not a part of photography that concerned her. She preferred to let
others do that job, and during the last twenty years of Mariana’s life I did that job happily. Twenty years in
direct contact with Mariana’s images. Most of them photos of Mexico, of the countryside, of the indians.
Through those images, I discovered a friendly Mexico, full of life, energy, good taste, worthy people. 
Mariana’s eyes also arranged delicately in each negative the sublime shapes of the maguey and many other
plants which I collected in the dark room, giving them volume, texture, tone.


Greatness and simplicity are the words to describe Mariana’s pictures. She achieved what all photographers
desire: synthesize precise information and beauty in her photographs.

Many of our working sessions took place at her house in Tlalpan, with her cat Azul on her lap, Blanca Nieves
and Chaca, her dogs, lying infront of her on the living-room couch; we carefully revised each copy and viewed
many contact sheets, while talking about the photographs and the photographers of our country. And amidst
contacts, photos, and framings, we talked about our lives, about us, women, friends, and sometimes
happiness filled us and other times tears rolled down our cheeks. Thus, through her photos we build a bond
of images, love, and solidarity. 

We made some trips together, not only geographical or photographic trips, but also voyages through
existence. Mariana liked to wonder about what fame is, where it leads, if it is worth pursuing, if it comes by its
own, if it satisfies your ego.


Conversations accompanied by the motor noise of her white VW went on from town to town, while her 
enthusiasm to take pictures grew. She stopped all the time, climbed off and on her little beetle constantly.
She had an accurate eye. Sometimes it seemed as if she became absorbed by the conversation, but it was
not so. She saw the world passing out of the corner of her eye and saw images all the time, capturing them
with her Hasselblad.


Later on, the conversation continued: “fame is not my goal, constant and demanding work is my motor, we 
don’t have to invent anything, everything is there just waiting to be discovered, photographed and enjoyed.”
If anybody enjoyed taking pictures, it was Mariana. In her people, in Mexico, she found the seriousness 
and the good humor to create her pictures in a loving, fun, and honest way.

We all know she was concerned with the tremendous cultural change Mexico is going through. This hurt her,
she did not get used to seeing the big Coca Cola signs and the store shelves filled with Mickey Mouse and
Barbie dolls, and she always wondered which way was best to counteract this avalanche. Then she would
take very Mexican pictures and go on wondering, “Why was the horror architecture growing so excessively
when Mexican popular architecture is so beautiful and immensely vast?” And she photographed that too. To
counteract horror architecture, she left us an important legacy of popular architecture photographs to use as
functionality, simplicity, and good taste examples.

With great discipline, she kept her negatives and documents in folders; she created a great archive of
negatives and a good quantity of boxes with memorable items. She dedicated many hours every day to put
everything in its place; overwhelmed, she stored papers away and answered phone calls, many calls, as in
the last three years se avoided as much as possible going out of her house and the telephone kept her close
to the others. She started forgetting things, she was uncomfortable, anguished. “I don’t like to make a bad 
impression,” she used to say. “What needs to be solved? I forget things,” she repeated constantly and the
phone rang many times in the day in Pachuca. What needs to be solved? 


Alicia Ahumada Salaiz
Founding member
Fundación Cultural Mariana Yampolsky, A.C.