Lowrider exhibit at Smithsonian Museum will feature work from Gabriela Campos
September 25, 2025 | Source: Monroe Gallery of Photography
A lowrider image by photographer Gabriela Campos, featured in the exhibition.
Gallery photographer Gabriela Campos is a native Santa Fean and staff photojournalist for her hometown paper, The New Mexican, as well as top-tier publications around the world. Campos will have some of her work featured in the exhibit, “Corazón y Vida: Lowriding Culture,” opening Sept. 26, 2025, in the National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Spanning 80 years of history, “Corazón y Vida” showcases lowriding as a Mexican American and Chicano art form, rooted in community, identity and creativity.
Campos is a native Santa Fean who works for her hometown paper, The New Mexican, as well as top-tier publications around the world. Gabriela Campos has photographed pretty much everything: ride-alongs with the border patrol for The New Mexican, the removal of conquistador statues for The Guardian, Oaxaca teacher riots and Mayan healing rituals for Al Jazeera, and the first indigenous Comic Con for VICE.
Five years ago, she did a profile on New Mexican lowriders for VICE, and fell in love with the people, their cars, the whole culture. She describes what obsesses her about what she calls “a project I’ll be doing the rest of my life:”
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
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