Lowrider on the Dixie Highway in Louisville, Kentucky. Photos by Erik Paul Howard.
Though often considered an automotive subculture geographically limited to Southern California, lowriding has spread across the country, from South Central to Kentucky and from New Mexico to Chicago. That nationwide reach – along with the culture and the aesthetic of the lowrider – lies at the heart of a new photo exhibit to take place not in L.A., but in Detroit.
“The cars might have been built here in Detroit, but they went all over the world, and the car customization cultures eventually made it back here,” said Erik Paul Howard, curator of the photo exhibit.
Howard said the exhibit, titled “Lowriding: From Crenshaw to Woodward,” came about after the gallery director at the Scarab Club in Detroit approached him about his photography – he has photographed the lowrider scene in Detroit since 2006 and has had his photos published in Lowrider magazine – but will feature work from several photographers from across the country and even one from Australia.
Hitting 3-wheel down Leimert behind El Pollo Loco on Crenshaw in South Central Los Angeles.
“Lowriding culture is pretty tight knit,” Howard said. “The guys exhibiting are all my contacts, friends, and colleagues that I’ve known since 2003. Not all of them are professionals – I wouldn’t even call myself a professional at this point – but they’re all deep in the community.”
Other photographers exhibiting work at the show include Steve Darmanin, Noah Levy, Arturo Meza, Dustin “Volo” Pedder, Tyson Robertson, Sergio Vallejo, and Tom Stoye. Most of the 50 pieces in the exhibit are photographs, but the exhibit also includes a few lowrider bicycles.
Treena Flannery Ericson, the gallery director at the Scarab Club, said the idea for the exhibit came after the Detroit Institute of Arts, which is currently hosting an exhibit dedicated to mural painter Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, asked other galleries and museums in the area to come up with related exhibits. “Lowriders are a wonderful cross-section where art and the community meet,” Ericson said. “And Erik was the perfect person to work with on this.”
Lowriders from the Majestics Car Club parked on Michigan Avenue in southwest Detroit.
Howard, who cruises in a 1976 Chevrolet Monte Carlo with the Detroit chapter of the lowriding club Uso, said Detroit’s lowriding scene includes about 75 cars – “not huge, but not tiny either” – but he points out that lowriding is no longer just an urban or Latino pastime. “New Mexico has a pretty amazing lowriding culture, and my understanding is that they mostly live in small towns and rural areas – they live out in the middle of nowhere building their cars,” he said. “And Uso – which means ‘brother’ in Samoan – started in the early 1990s to champion diversity and to break down color lines in car clubs. We have Latinos, but we also have blacks, whites. The club has grown with this family-type philosophy.”
The exhibit, which opened April 1, will have its opening reception on April 10. Then on April 29, Howard will speak as part of the exhibit’s GalleryTalk night, and as part of the closing reception, the gallery will host a lowrider cruise-in on May 16.
For more information on the exhibit, visit ScarabClub.org.
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