The Lowriders: From Detroit to L.A. and Back is a 20-year lyrical documentary photography project that delves into the heart of lowrider culture, with Detroit as its center. For more than two decades Erik Paul Howard has documented the culture through relationships with riders, families, and car clubs in Detroit, the Midwest, and across the country.
The cars that serve as traditional lowriders were originally designed and built in Detroit. They were sent around the world and inspired a number of automotive customization cultures, many of which worked their way back to the Motor City itself.
In Los Angeles, late 1930’s Pachuco culture popularized the low-slung stance that came to be a lowriding social and stylistic statement. In the 1950’s Los Angeles innovated hydraulic suspensions, with the ability to adjust the cars’ ride height while still driving. This was a response to law enforcement’s targeted crackdowns, but it became a qualifying modification of lowriders soon thereafter.
Since then, lowriding has traveled across time, cultures, and communities developing its own unique characteristics in various locales on a round-trip voyage back into the heart of Detroiters where the culture is integrated into the lives of riders and their families.
