Hydraulic Revolution

Photographs of Los Angeles’s lowriding scene

Latest Nov 12, 2024 0 7 Add to Reading List

Photographs by Owen Harvey

When the London-based photographer Owen Harvey visited Los Angeles in June 2023, lowriding was illegal. A hobby popular with Mexican Americans since the 1940s, lowriding is the practice of modifying a car so that it can cruise just inches off the ground; Harvey had first learned of it as a teenager from hip-hop, specifically the music of Cypress Hill, Eazy-E, and Dr. Dre. Today his photography focuses on subcultures, and in L.A., he turned his camera toward the city’s lowriding scene.

For years, California’s vehicle code made lowriders illegal, assuming an association between their drivers and gang violence. In the face of police harassment, customizing a Chevrolet Impala or a Cadillac Fleetwood with a specialized hydraulics system was an act of rebellion, an expression of pride. Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill overturning the state’s lowriding bans in October 2023: The cars and their drivers now belonged.

photo of side of car with detailed black mural painted on red background — The mural exterior of a lowrider in downtown L.A.

One lowrider Harvey photographed was Erik Rodriguez, a 29-year-old mechanic from Pasadena who first encountered lowriding as a child living in public housing on the city’s west side. Rodriguez told me that he’d thrill when lowriders in the neighborhood would “jump” their cars, triggering the hydraulics to change how high they rode off the ground. Today, Rodriguez’s blue 1982 Oldsmobile Cutlass—“Smurfin Around,” he calls it—can jump more than five feet in the air.

photo of man with black mustache and long black hair in two braids sitting on trunk of blue Cadillac with one foot on bumper, with mountains in background — John Butcher with his car “California Blues” in the Malibu Hills

In another portrait, Carmen Vera leans against her pink 1979 Oldsmobile, polished to a high shine. She told me that her loved ones couldn’t fathom why she had poured so much energy into the car, equipping it with a specialized engine, modifying its trunk to accommodate six batteries and three hydraulic pumps, and emblazoning its exterior with an alcatraz-flower pattern. She named her car “Miche LA Nalgona,” after her michelada business, which helped finance the vehicle’s custom work. “Sometimes people take you as a joke, as Ah, you’re just a woman,” she told me. “Some thought I’m too old for this … This is the first time that I stuck to my guns and I said, ‘Screw the world—I’m doing what I want to do, and what is making me happy.’ ”