Vicky Papas Vergara is an Australian photographer and a couture artist making waves across Australian photography with her extremely chic and sophisticated passion for the idea of beauty.
In just one and a half years, Vergara’s incredible work, including fashion and beauty photography, has landed her three incredible awards; both first place prize in the fashion division and grand prize winner for the creative category in the Wedding and Portrait Photography Insitute’s (WPPI) awards 2015, as well as the 2014 Epson Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) Victorian Portrait Photographer award. Vicky Vergara was also a finalist for the 2014 Canon AIPP Australian Portrait Photographer.
Vergara has not always been a photographer, however, with her artistic passion spurring from a long-time career as a hairdresser. At the age of just sixteen Vergara began her career in hairdressing, and is currently in her 30th year in the beauty industry. The talented photographer says that she has “always been creative” but when she was 41, “something snapped and [she] started on her creative rampage.” The fusion of hairdressing and photography has proven an interesting integration for Vergara, allowing the knowledge she has attained from the beauty industry to influence her photos. With parents from towns just outside of Athens, Vergara tells Neos Kosmos that the gowns she makes for her photos are “very European and most of them very Grecian”. She also places value in old world aesthetic.
Just one and half years ago Vergara made the successful transition into photography, with works based on the female form integrated with fashion and beauty. With a vast majority of her photographic works centred on the idea of beauty, Vergara tells Neos Kosmos that her work “is about making women feel empowered, not just beautiful. It is about being strong and being a woman.” The Vergara photography experience is also about releasing the inner beauty of her subjects. “Every woman is beautiful and every woman has inner beauty. Vergara is about experiencing what it feels to step into the light.”
Her photographic works further aim to reaffirm the importance of feminine self-worth through portraiture, which she believes can also rekindle a love once strongly held between women and portraits. “Every woman should have a portrait to capture herself. When compared to women of the 50s and 60s in Greece, who would always have black and white portraits, nowadays it is uncommon. The importance of portraits is lost and I think that’s really sad.”
In the future, Vicky wishes to pursue her creative aspiration in increasing the prevalence of female portraits.