Kristin Bedford is an LA-based photographer creating work centred around the intersection of aesthetics and social realism. Her photography explores race, visual stereotypes and communal self-expression. Through long-term engagement with communities, Bedford invites us to reconsider prevalent visual narratives around cultural and spiritual movements. Her new photo book, “Cruise Night”, pulls back the curtain on LA’s Mexican American lowrider car culture, aiming to tackle the misconceptions and celebrate the uniqueness of this marginalised community.
Q > Tell us about the most unconventional project (even if it did not materialise).
A > In my photographic career all of my projects are entered with the same amount of curiosity, love and respect for the subjects, so I can’t point to any single project being more conventional or unconventional.
Q > Could you give us an overview of your project ‘Cruise Night’, and what motivated you to start documenting the Los Angeles Mexican American lowrider community?
A > Underlying all of my projects is an interest in social justice and how communities express their civil rights in a society that often marginalises them. My path to lowriding came from an interest in how the customisation of a car is about having a voice — politically, culturally and creatively. While lowriding is a worldwide phenomenon, for Mexican Americans in Los Angeles, it has a unique significance. For over 70 years, this community has been expressing their identity through this distinct car culture. I wanted to photograph and understand how transforming a car was integral to being seen and heard.
Q > Tell us a story you refuse to forget about the heart of this community.
A > For the first two years of working on Cruise Night I intellectually understood the cultural and creative significance of lowriding for the Mexican American community in Los Angeles. There was a moment in 2016 when I felt an internal shift from a cognitive understanding to an intuitive one. Suddenly, I could feel how lowriding was in their DNA and how it is part of who they are. As a result of the lowriding family so generously embracing me, I had the opportunity to understand this tradition at a personal level.
Q > What are you hoping to evoke or uncover through your work?
A > I hope that viewers will perceive the beauty and depth that I witnessed while making Cruise Night. Lowriding has often been stereotyped and misunderstood as simplistic or crude. In my own quiet way, I am offering a glimpse at how I experienced this great American tradition.
Q > Do you keep your work separate from your personal life?
A > While my interest in communal self-expression is what brought me to lowriding, once I began making photographs of the movement, I had no agenda. My process is to completely turn myself over to the unknown. I am grounded in mystery and I let the photos reveal what the story is about. And yes, the creation of Cruise Night was personal at a core level.
While I make the photographs in community, the rest of my process happens in isolation. I return to my art studio and quietly review the images. I am only interested in photographs that move me, and my selection process is entirely intuitive. Once I come across an image that speaks to me, I print it and place it on one of the long tables in my studio. Over time, the tables slowly fill up with these photographs. I don’t show the work to others, as the process is deeply personal. I patiently watch to see how the photos talk to each other, and for years I cannot know what the end story will be.
Q > Which things would you like to include more in your life / and less of?
A > A year into the Covid-19 pandemic shapes both of these answers: I would like more in-person community and less time connecting with friends through technology.
Q > Building connections with ‘places’ through presence and absence — past and present — tell us about your journeys and which places have triggered memorable emotions.
A > For my entire career I have considered myself a “photographer”. During the making of Cruise Night I realised for the first time that I was a “woman photographer”. When I saw the reverent, quiet and natural photos of women lowriders I made, I discerned that it was a woman connecting with other women who made them. I also reflected on why I had not seen images like this before and it became clear to me that the visual narrative of lowriding, and automotive cultures of all types, has been entirely shaped by men. The male-dominated imagery usually portrays women as sexual accessories who pose in bathing suits or lingerie alongside a car. I feel it took a woman photographer to break through this mould and offer a new story.
Bedford holds a B.A. from George Washington University, an A.A. from The Fashion Institute of Technology and an M.F.A. from Duke University. Born in Washington, D.C., she lives and works in Los Angeles. Her photographs have appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout the US and Europe and are held in numerous private and public collections worldwide, including the Library of Congress and the Archive of Documentary Arts at the Rubenstein Library. She has given talks internationally about her projects, including presentations at Pop-Up Magazine and on numerous NPR broadcasts. Her work has been featured in such publications as The New York Times, The Guardian, Smithsonian Magazine, The Telegraph, and Esquire.