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’56 Chevrolet Pickup, Owner Joseph Martínez of Chimayó, 1998. -
Eppie clowning with his ’64 Impala, Chimayó, 2012. -
’72 Buick Riviera, Owner Adam Garcia of Las Vegas, 1998. -
Precision, 2014. -
Joseph Chacon’s 1981 Coupe Deville Daccy, Tomasita’s Second Annual Lowrider and Custom Car Show, 2013. -
Impala Verde, 2013. -
Oldsmobile Cutlass Three-Wheeling at Mainstreet Showdown, Española, 2015. -
Randy Martínez Mural, 2015. -
David Vigil and Ramón Esquibel, Chimayó, 2015. -
Elmo Sánchez with his ’50 Chevy, 2012.
A procession of lowriders glides down the highway, chrome glinting in the sun and the New Mexico landscape rolling past. The photo, from 1980, is part of a collection of images by photographers featuring the elaborate cars and their special place in Mexican-American culture.
The photographs in ¡Órale! Lowrider, by Don J. Usner and Katherine Ware, celebrate the Impalas, Chevrolets and Fords as personalized works of art rather than just status symbols: black-and-white portraits of men and their beloved cars, a bride and groom in a motorcade, a colorful icon of Our Lady Guadalupe airbrushed on a hood. “Each vehicle embodies a story, sometimes in a painted mural memorializing a lost loved one or depicting a narrative of struggle and redemption,” Usner writes. The project documents the decades-long evolution of styles in New Mexico’s lowriders, a unique cultural tradition that is, as Usner puts it, “redolent with memories of extended family, community and place.”
¡Órale! Lowrider: Custom Made in New Mexico
Don J. Usner and Katherine Ware
179 pages, hardcover: $39.95.
Museum of New Mexico Press, 2016
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline The story behind New Mexico’s lowriders.
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