There’s more than gleaming metal surfaces and a sexy street presence in Gabriela Campos’ photographs of lowriders in New Mexico.

Dagger fingernails and polished glass, swirls of blue ink wrapping muscled torsos, tough-guy biceps cradling newborn babes — the images capture  quintessential New Mexican culture, one that boldly proclaims its stature among lowrider communities in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tokyo.

Her lens cruises like the cars, a magic carpet ride with a kick-ass orgullo.

Campos rode in the New Mexico scene for years, getting to know the unabashedly proud drivers whose vehicles are a personal expression of life in the streetlight glare in New Mexican towns like Burque, Spaña and Chimayó. Her long familiarity with the culture enables her to capture the celebratory atmosphere and shared love of pageantry. She illuminates the badass drivers, tattooed chicas strutting alongside Impalas and Regals and Caddies alive with dizzying lines and Chicano-themed murals. Dancing cheek-to-cheek down Burque’s streets and scattering light from radiant metallic spokes, lowriders speak to a cultural identity that cannot be subverted or stereotyped or captured by any meme. 

Her lens cruises like the cars, a magic carpet ride with a kick-ass orgullo.

In her eyes, lowriders are poetry in motion, statements in style that shout in bold double-underlined letters, “I’ll show you who I am! Stand back, heads up, look at me!”

The don’t-mess-with-me attitude of the drivers is accompanied by a warm invitation to join them for a ride beneath the vast New Mexico clouds. Campos shows that lowriders are so much more than colorful cars and rebellious tough guys; she shows hometown heroes, a cadre of spirited vatos and everyday fathers and mothers and children, all empowered by cruising the streets in their artfully crafted and lovingly cared-for behemoths.  

We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at editor@hcn.org or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.

This article appeared in the May 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Drop It Low.”