October 4, 2025
ALBUQUERQUE — Armed with a Sony camera, Gabriela Campos lowered herself to the sidewalk as the candy red ’59 Chevy Impala glided to a standstill on Central Avenue, embarking on a long run of hops and undulations with its hydraulic suspension pulling hard.
The cruise was on, and Campos was out chasing cars on Central again on a recent Sunday, shifting the lens for a shot in the day’s final light. Mesmerizing, chrome hypnotic and upholstery speckless, the vehicles rolled before the Kimo Theatre, cool and defiant street royalty, a Bel Air with an imitation fox tail swinging from the mirror in the urban desert wind.
Late last month was a major career moment for the New Mexican photographer, who has become known in recent years for her intimate photography of lowriders and the culture surrounding them. A collection of Campos’ lowrider work is now on display in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in an exhibit titled Corazón y vida: Lowriding Culture that opened Sept. 26 and will run through October of 2027.
That her images are featuring so prominently on a stage more or less unparalleled in photography and in the arts is a dream come true for Campos, who is Santa Fe born and raised.
The exhibit also carries the work of noted Chicano photographer Estevan Oriol and the actual bodies of two classic Chevy Impalas, “El Rey” and “Gypsy Rose.” The latter is often referred to as the most famous lowrider ever.
Campos is the lone New Mexican featured in the show.
Lowriders compete in a hopping competition during The Albuquerque Super Show in 2023.
Courtesy Gabriela Campos
Her photographs show people living their lives out loud with the portraits of their family members etched on their cars, much love for the scene in their hearts and Zia symbols and Virgin Mary tattoos abounding. They come into focus proud, resolute before the glittering skyline of no-nonsense Albuquerque.
“The joy for me comes from being on the corner of 7th and Central, surrounded by friends and chasing cars,” Campos said. “It’s about the people, the community, hearing the backstory of the cars, where they come from, how far they’ve come.”
Her five photographs in the exhibit include quintessential Norteño scenes. There is a cleansing elegance about the images, the cars dramatizing their surroundings anew. A red convertible cruises in the evening next to a chile stand with portraits of Jesus Christ just outside El Santuario de Chimayó. A silver whip with one wheel in the air wends its way past the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi near the Santa Fe Plaza.
The project was years in the making. Curators for the show reached out to Campos about five years ago, wanting her photos to play a part.
“Walking into the show, I was sort of in disbelief that, after a five-year process, it was real,” said Campos, who recently returned from Washington, D.C. “... I’ve been shooting lowriders for years now, and it’s been such a journey.”
Campos graduated from Santa Fe High School and later attended the University of New Mexico. Campos has become a part of the street scene itself, a mainstay in the hopping pits and around the cruises. Riders pull up to a traffic light on Central, already posing on Campos’ approach.
For Campos, the people are as inspiring as the candy-colored vehicles they pilot. A focus for her has always been female lowriders, depicted in two of her photographs that will be in the Smithsonian’s permanent collection.
An Impala slowly makes its way past the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi following a Santa Fe lowrider day in 2023
Courtesy Gabriela Campos
“It’s really empowering to see women behind the wheel — working on upholstery, working on pinstriping,” Campos said.
When she sees a car she does not recognize, Campos smiles, shakes her head and marvels at it as she wonders where it has come from — a Belen Impala that does not get out much? It’s enough to make her night.
Her dream car? A ’59 Chevrolet El Camino.
