Tavera's work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Soap Factory, the Eide/Dalrymple Gallery at Augustana University, the Staniar Gallery at Washington and Lee University, the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art in Georgia, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, the Galeria del Hospital Maciel in Montevideo, Uruguay, and at ProjekTraum FN at l'atelier Glidden Wozniak in Friedrichshafen, Germany.
During these formative years, Tavera also became interested in events which brought people together such as community or identity-forming shows, such as reenactments of “La Pasión de Cristo'' or the creation of ofrendas.
Initially enrolled in law school in 1993 at Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico City,[2] Tavera came to professional photography in 1996 when he was invited to work as an industrial photographer for a company in the United States.
[5] The company offered to cover the cost of tuition at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD), allowing Tavera to pursue an artistic path.
[8] Tavera's work is based in his theory of photographic experience in which the process begins when the artist conceives an idea, continues over the course of multiple conversations with the intended subject (sometimes involving long-distance travel, culminating in one or more photography sessions, complete with the image post production.
Due to a lack of information on Escuadrón 201 and his personal interest in the subject, Tavera began seeking out veterans with the intention of documenting their lives and stories through photography.
[10] From personal interviews to photographs from his work with veterans, Tavera collected a wide variety of information which he sought to preserve through the Minnesota Historical Society.
Through the use of a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, Tavera organized all of his photographs, interviews, and general information into a large collection, ready for preservation.
[13] In the summer of 2020 he was able to publish a book with Cottage Industry, titled Nowhere To Go But Home where compiled all the portraits of the project and two essays by Andrea Lepage and Mike Soto.
[5] Drawing on his previous work, he also began photographing deported veterans living on the border—many of whom were Mexican-born and served under various branches of the United States military as undocumented citizens.
Tavera also documents the structures and serial numbers placed onto the masks by the institutions they are held in which shows evidence of a different type of transformation: personal and intimate object to museum artifact.
[18] Another part of Tavera's experimental work is labeled Vaqueras/Vaqueros, and its focus is on reinventing and reimagining the constructed Hollywood concept of the white cowboy as the lonely hero and the brown mustachioed villain.