The best (and perhaps the only) way to approach his archive is to pick a motif. Around Easter a few years ago, his photos of street-art Jesus. And recently, with the news of Nelson Mandela's declining health, Vergara sent me a new set: renditions of black leaders in urban murals.
A few themes emerge: The enduring ubiquity of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The waxing and waning of Mandela's face: "The late '80s and early '90s was the heyday of the Mandela pictures," says Vergara, "when the really important people were Mandela, Malcolm X and MLK."
And in recent years, a new face has been written on the walls of America: that of President Obama.
