artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...
who creates photographs from multiple exposures that she hand colors. She often devotes several works to a particular theme, creating series.
Biography
Vargas was born in
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio ( ; Spanish for "Anthony of Padua, Saint Anthony") is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in Greater San Antonio. San Antonio is the List of Texas metropolitan areas, third-largest metropolitan area in Texa ...
. She was influenced early on by her
Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
faith, her grandmother's ghost stories and her father's retelling of
pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...
hand-colored
Hand-colouring (or hand-coloring) refers to any method of manually adding colour to a Monochrome photography, monochrome photograph, generally either to heighten the realism of the image or for artistic purposes. Hand-colouring is also known as ...
photography around 1970 when she worked for Bill and Jerry Hayes in her hometown at a small production company. She was placed in the animation department and from there learned how to do special effects. Vargas learned dark room work here before she began learning about photography.
At the Southwest Craft Center, Kathy learned rock-and-roll photography from Tom Wright in 1971, which she practiced professionally from 1973 to 1977.
Kathy Vargas began classes at San Antonio College with Mel Casas, a Chicano artist, who invited her to attend a Con Safo art group meeting after seeing some of her photographs. She felt welcome there and loved what the group was doing with art. Kathy gives credit to Casas for opening her eyes and sharing many Chicano and Chicana artists with her. When she began to feel limited, she notified them that it was time for her to create her own art and departed from the Con Safo art group. Vargas wanted to experiment with the medium and create her own photographic style. Vargas joined the group in 1974 and left in 1975.
A few years later, while working on a documentary project about yard shrines in her home town of San Antonio, Texas, she began researching Mexican and pre-Columbian myths and literature, and to produce works based on a photographic '
magic realism
Magical realism, magic realism, or marvelous realism is a style or genre of fiction and art that presents a realistic view of the world while incorporating magical elements, often blurring the lines between speculation and reality. ''Magical re ...
' involving layering by multiple exposure and hand colouring (Marshall).
In 1993 she produced a portfolio titled, ''Revelaciones'', and a year later was published in Nueva Luz photographic journal, volume 4#2 En Foco Bronx: 1994)
Her ''Este Recuerdo'' series (2003) consists of 23 photographs. They are made from between two and four negatives (many shot from old family photographs) and colored with oil paint. According to the artist, her various acts of reframing result in "symbolically entombed" subjects. Vargas utilizes acidic rose and purple colors to reference early color photographs, as well as vintage hand-tinted pictures. As continuing explorations of "death and remembrance," they are intended to be melancholic relics. Vargas believes that Roland Barthes defined the essence of photography in his book ''Camera Lucida'', written after the death of his mother. Barthes says photography is an entrance "into ''flat Death''." Moreover, "the only thought I can have is that at the end of this first death, my own death is inscribed: between the two, nothing more than waiting...."
She is interested in "the anatomy of death and the aftermath of everlasting life." Vargas often uses iconography from Aztec art, along with various other cultural and Christian symbols.
Further reading
*"Photography and Nostalgia: The Touched-up Images of Kathy Vargas". p. 29–41in David William Foster, ''Picturing the Barrio: Ten Chicano Photographers''.
Exhibits
Solo exhibits:
* Sala Uno in Rome
* Galeria San Martín in Mexico City
* Centro Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Argentina
* McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas
Group exhibits:
* “Hospice: A Photographic Inquiry,” a traveling exhibit commissioned by the Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C.
* “Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation (CARA)”
*"Visibilities: Intrepid Women of Artpace" at
Artpace
Artpace (also known as Artpace San Antonio) is a non-profit contemporary art foundation located in downtown San Antonio, Texas that is free and open to the public. Founded by artist, collector, and philanthropist Linda Pace, Artpace opened its d ...
, San Antonio, TX.
Books
* Vargas, Kathy, and Connie Arismendi. ''Intimate lives: work by ten contemporary Latina artists''. Austin, TX: Women & Their Work, 1993.
* Muñoz, Celia Alvarez, Noriega, Chon A., José Piedra, Kathy Vargas, and Victor Zamudio-Taylor. ''Revelaciones = Revelations: Hispanic art of evanescence''. Ithaca, NY: Hispanic American Studies Program, Cornell University, 1993.
* Goldberg, Jim,
Nan Goldin
Nancy Goldin (born 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work explores in snapshot-style the emotions of the individual, in intimate relationships, and the Bohemian style, bohemian LGBT subcultural communities, especially dealing w ...
,
Sally Mann
Sally Mann (born Sally Turner Munger; May 1, 1951) is an American photographer known for making large format black and white photographs of people and places in her immediate surroundings: her children, husband, and rural landscapes, as well as ...
, Jack Radcliffe, and Kathy Vargas. ''Hospice: a photographic inquiry''. Boston: Little, Brown, in association with the Corcoran Gallery of Art and National Hospice Foundation, 1996. .
* Lippard, Lucy R., and MaLin Wilson-Powell. ''Kathy Vargas: photographs, 1971–2000''. San Antonio, TX: Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, 2000. .
* ''Art at Our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists'' featuring Kathy Vargas. Edited by Nan Cuba and Riley Robinson (
Trinity University Press
Trinity University Press is a university press affiliated with Trinity University, which is located in San Antonio, Texas. Trinity University Press was officially founded in 1967 after the university acquired the Illinois-based Principia Press. T ...