Kathy Vargas knew she would be a photographer when she first saw a picture develop in a darkroom in 1971. As the exposed silver washed away from the paper to reveal her image, Vargas was hooked to the medium. Six months later, she ditched her aspirations of painting and picked up a camera and has since devoted her life to photography. In her 35 years as a photographer, Vargas has explored ways of making her work accessible to "regular people." For Serie XIII, Vargas recreated a hand-colored, gelatin silver print entitled Innocent Age, one photograph of a series capturing the essence of people she knows through images of their childhood. In Innocent Age, Vargas borrowed a picture of a friend's father who was the late Texas Senator Gregory Luna. The image shows a young Luna riding a tricycle that's too small for him in a yard that indicates Luna's humble beginnings. Vargas chose to use the image based on her question of what it takes to raise an emotionally happy child: "Sometimes, even when you've got a tricycle that you've outgrown because maybe your family can't afford a new bike and there's calzones (long underwear) hanging from the clothesline, you've still got enough to succeed if you've got the love and support of your family." Vargas complements the photograph with a layered frame that is meant to reveal more about the subject because, according to the artist, "people still expect photography to tell them the truth and they expect photography to preserve their memories. Photographs are the truth, but not the whole truth, and every time you look at a photograph it's everybody's memories getting layered on it."
Vargas received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in 1981 and her Masters of Fine Arts in 1984 from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She currently resides in her hometown of San Antonio and is completing her Innocent Age series.
