Kathy Vargas (born June 23, 1950) is an American artist who creates photographs from multiple exposures that she hand colors.
[1] Kathy Vargas became interested in hand-colored photography around 1970 when she worked for Bill and Jerry Hayes in her hometown at a small production company.
[3] 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.
[4] 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' involving layering by multiple exposure and hand colouring (Marshall).
Vargas believes that Roland Barthes defined the essence of photography in his book Camera Lucida, written after the death of his mother.