Kevin Thomas Garcia

About the Photographer. Sometimes it takes an actor to capture someone’s true character. Take Kevin Thomas Garcia, the aspiring New York photographer who toured as a performer with Grease, Footloose and Mamma Mia before moving to New York and picking up a camera. He manages to showcase a special inner quality of his subjects, like he’s revealing a secret, relating an undiscovered, likeable quality to the viewer. “Capturing a moment, that’s exactly what I love about photography. You take a thousand photos and there’s maybe three or four that you’re like, ‘That was it!’” the charming and outgoing Garcia confessed to us recently. “I know it’s so gay that I’m bringing up Judy Garland in an interview, but there’s a picture of her and someone is lighting her cigarette and it’s shot through her dressing room mirror. That one picture alone just says it all.”

Garcia’s portrait work can currently be seen in advertisements for Tagg, the Hell’s Kitchen’s men’s boutique located across the street from the scruffy 31-year-old’s apartment; on BroadwayWorld.com, where he specializes in live performance work; and even Next Magazine’s August 12, 2011 cover (sure not to be his last). A self-taught artist, Garcia has read everything he could on the subject and counts Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz as inspirations for his work and for the kind of celebrity portraiture he hopes will one day define his career. Sure, a lofty goal for someone who’s only been at the craft for a few years. But then again, the former military brat has been crafting images of a certain sort all his life. “Whenever I was getting head shots done as an actor I would see photographers who were actors. Anyone can take a pretty picture…but there has [to be] something else in there. I find that actors are the ones who do it the best because we know what we need,” he explains. “School will teach you a lot of the technical aspects but it can’t teach you the passion and vision.”

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