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At twenty years old, Mariana Yampolsky left her native US in 1945. She became the first woman in the Taller de Grafica Popular (the People’s Graphic Workshop), an antifascist project started in the late 1930s by Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O’Higgins, and Luis Arena.

Yampolsky was a socialist, close to the Mexican Communist Party. She worked for many years with the secretariat of public education during the period, when the office was staffed by progressive educators dedicated to bringing schools and literacy to rural areas, especially in indigenous communities. She published art and children’s books, including textbooks for schools, and documented indigenous community life in a realist style.

One of her best-known photographs, Martel, shows a disused railway station — half a railroad car — as empty tracks lead to nothing in the distance. The composition’s strong graphic elements show her skill as a printmaker, paring reality down to a few essential elements. The image dates from the years, now long since gone, when passenger rail service still existed in Mexico, but its atmosphere of abandonment is evocative of the migration issues of today.


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