Hector Nevarez Magaña

Hector Nevarez Magaña (born 1994) is a Mexican American photographer living and working in Portland. Originally from East Palo Alto, California, Hector attended Bowdoin College, where he received his BA in visual arts in 2016. After moving to Portland, he co-founded New System Exhibitions, an artist-run exhibition space in the Bayside neighborhood where he currently maintains and operates his own darkroom. Hector’s photographs have been shown at New System Exhibitions, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Dowling Walsh Gallery, and SOIL Gallery in Seattle.

Artist Statement

My photographs perform like poems; short bursts of mundanity interlaced with residue of instance from romance, remembrance, faith, and death. They clumsily strike a balance between anxiety and play, meeting at a melancholic junction that is both personal and universal.

 I take inspiration from my Mexican Catholic upbringing, often exploring its symbols and emotional weights, and from 20th-century Mexican photographers whose works investigated the changing artistic Mexican identity at the time.

In an attempt to challenge myself I am currently exploring and photographing church structures in rural landscapes, specifically the Norway Center Congregational Church in Norway, Maine, using a large-format view camera.