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On the Road with Kristin Bedford
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Jun 6, 2024
Welcome to JC Whitney's "On The Road" Podcast. Please "Subscribe" to our channel. Kristin Bedford talks about her incredible photography career, her new book, and the way she has beautifully documented Mexican American lowrider culture. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of On The Road, our new podcast series. We will be featuring an episode every other week with industry experts, friends, and storytellers. SUBSCRIBE to our channel so you don't miss an episode. Check out Kristin Bedford's book 'Cruise Night' for amazing photos Mexican American lowrider car culture in Los Angeles. https://kristin-bedford-cruise-night-book.square.site/ #JCWhitney #car #carlifestyle #automotive
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0:00
Hello and welcome
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I am your host, Angel Salad, the Lead. And today we are welcomed and joined by Kristen Bedford
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Wonderful. Thank you, Kristen, for coming. Thank you so much. So Kristen has a book, Cruise Night
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This book has been a top seller in 2021. Her book goes into the Mexican-American lower
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rider community in Los Angeles. Kristen has been to hundreds of car shows. And so Kristen's book sold out
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Now we have the second print of her book with what are you currently doing in the automotive world
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specifically that you'd be able to share with us today? In 2014, I started this project about the
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Mexican-American low-rider community. I have been on this journey since then. The pictures in the book are from 2014
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to 2019 so I took them over five years. I was not a drive-by photographer. I didn't just go for the
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weekend, you know, a Friday night cruise night, a Saturday cruise night, Saturday night on Whittier
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and then Elysian Park on Sunday afternoon. That is like the weekend. Yeah, full spread. The full
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spread. And while I did this over so many years, I saw people from all over the world and all over
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the country come and do a little long weekend. So I really went deep into it and understanding
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the meaning of the cars in the community. But to get to your question about what I'm doing now
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I'm still really active with the low-writer community. And we've been celebrating the book a lot
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And all of the people in the book, you know, have seen it. And I know them well. And so we've
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been sort of in a party phase right now because the book came out and a lot of people never saw
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it because it sold out so fast. Right. So part of the reason I printed it again is to get it into the hands of the community and
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also to keep it off Amazon for the time being and get it into alternative models
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So record stores, tattoo parlors, you know, places where people in the community would
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naturally go. A lot of people don't do online shopping. A lot of people aren't going to be going to
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big box bookstores somewhere. So really thinking about how to integrate the book to where people are
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in the community. In Los Angeles, for the Mexican-American community, low writing has a really distinct
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significance. The art and the act of customization is about having a voice
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politically, culturally, socially, creatively, communally. So there's many, many different layers. In a society that often marginalizes Mexican-Americans
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you think of the low-rider, low and slow, Bahitoi-Suavisito, going down the boulevard
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It's a mobile canvas. And it's, here I am, and here was my vision
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So each one is about having a voice. and that is what interests me about customization
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that in the case of the Mexican-American community, it has a social justice component to it
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So, Kristen, I do want to kind of segue, right? There has to have been, there had to have been
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a time in your life where you know you had to experience in a car whether you you know leaving the hospital or having a joyride on your first date can you signal out or single out a moment a defining
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moment in your relationship with automobile deals specifically? One memory that comes to mine is from a few years ago. I decided to drive from Los Angeles
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to New York in my 2018 Tesla model. Model 3. And that year, it was a premium car, so it was made with a range of about 308 miles
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which enabled me to do that because in some states, there are very long periods of time between superchargers
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I often, no, no, I would get off, and I would often just sleep in, like, agricultural areas
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or behind like garden centers, places where they weren't going to maybe come into work anyways
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till the next day. Nobody was going to these places. No foot traffic
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And so this is a long walk to say behind one of these sort of agricultural buildings
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I went to sleep. Nothing is covered. And I woke up. in a haze and there were all these like white and light gray horses looking in from all the windows
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looking in at me and there is this moment where we're always like get out your phone take a picture
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make a video and I had that like immediate like document this yeah and then I was like no
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This is like some magical moment in time that doesn't even seem real
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And so I just stayed really still and they just kept looking in
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And we had quite a longer moment than I would have imagined
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And eventually they wandered off. And everything was lit by the moon too because you have that, you know, the glass panel on the top. Panorama
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Yeah. The moon was coming in as well and illuminating the horses
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which is also why I could tell that they were, you know, white and light gray. So then I went back to sleep and I woke up and I actually thought this was
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like that wasn't real. That was a dream sequence. That sort of thing didn't happen
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And I got out of the car. And there were, no, there were, you know, tracks
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Okay, yeah. On the ground, like, buy my win. windows by the doors and I was so that was really probably the most magical experience I've ever
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had in a car it was yeah it was magic let's have some comforts here yeah no Kristen now some of
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our guests are probably going to wonder where do I get this book what do I you know where do I go
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to see Kristen's new stuff if I want to reach out how do I reach her can you share some of that Yeah
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So there's two easy ways to get the book. One is you can order it from LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on their website
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It's very clear. And they are one of the major distributors of the book
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The second place is directly from me. And on my website and on my Instagram, there's a link to the..
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What's your Instagram handle? Yeah, it's just my name, actually. it is just K underscore Bedford And the big mistake everybody makes is they but E E It actually I yeah And so there links everywhere
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My website, on Instagram, on Facebook, which is also just my name
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I don't have any cool name. No, it's a great name. Like Photo Girl, you know, L.A
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No. Something like there's no, I have no cool name. and the thing about ordering it for me is I do sign it
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Okay. And I even inscribe it. And I'll write like people like have me inscribe it to them and their car
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or even just to their car. Right. I'm like, I'll just write what you want
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So that's also fun to do it that way. They were printed
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The second printing I did myself. Okay. I had it done at probably the best
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color printing press in Italy. So the colors are absolutely stunning. And for a book on low writing, yeah
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So yeah, you need to have that. You want the color, yeah, right. Because you can't, like, that's not where you cut back
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Right. The color in the lowrider world is huge. I mean, they're doing a lot of candy apples
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You know, they're doing all of those candy colors. Everything. So this is the most famous lowrider in the world, Gypsy Rose from Imperial's Car Club
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Wow. And, you know, so it's also really important for me to go on press when we print it because
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I'm the only person there who knows what Gypsy Rose looks like
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It looks like in real life. So for a lot of these cars in here, they are known in the community
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And I don't want them to be like, Kristen, that's not what my car looks like when they see
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the book, but instead to have it represented. So having really good color
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So like the hues and all of this are very accurate to
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the actual um IRL for all of our younger the in real life version
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of these cars they're very very close yeah so this is Sandra
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waiting to go into the um Tories Empire car show at the LA
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convention center hanging out in the lineup yeah so it's called Pinky
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I know this I've written in this car many times I know Sandra we're friends like I'm gonna
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I have to go to the distance to make sure this is right. Accurate. So this is to say this reprinting is really, really beautiful
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The colors sing at just a whole other level. Can I also talk about the cover
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Yeah, talk about it. Okay. So I had a really clear vision of how I wanted the book to look
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Right away, when I started the project, I knew I wanted to do a book
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and I knew I wanted to be called Cruise Night. And I knew I wanted to contextualize it in a modernist framework
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And it became an interesting journey because when I was talking to publishers and book designers who could implement my vision, everyone wanted it to be more street
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The color and font? The typeface, yes. The whole cover. So graffiti font, some form of ink, tattoo font
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you know, tattoo font, or typeface is what they say in the publishing world. So it was interesting
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that even the representation of low writing was boxed in by a style of graphic design. And I was
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saying no I have my own idea I have my own idea about everything about how I wanted to shoot cars about how I wanted the book to look And so I sourced everything myself This is this beautiful blue rayon fabric
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And then I got this really great other blue from a German
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It's a company and it's a metallic deboss. And the reason I did it is for two reasons
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and one is that when you see a car cruising at night and it goes underneath the street lights
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you see it reflect. Like you can never just see it as a solid thing, right
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It's like constantly moving. Yeah, tones are changing. Tones are changing. In fact, most things are changing at night
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So here's a good example of nighttime. Yeah. Oh, that's my friend Raoul in his car
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modern love, yes, like the David Bowie song. And so that's on Whittier Boulevard
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But even there, you can start to see how it's changing. That's cool
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And so the other reason I did the metallic debas to the dismay of the publishers
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is because it represents candy paint. And the paint jobs, depending on the light you look at them in
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and depending on the time of day, they look like different colors
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It could be like burgundy from this side, magenta from this side, more of like a pink from
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over there, depending on how it is. And the publishers kept saying, well, we can't just see it straight on
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We can't see it straight on. They were in Italy separate from the press
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I had publishers for the first printing and not for the second printing
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And they kept saying, and I kept saying, no. experience of paint jobs is always changing, which is why. So I thought about every detail of the book
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and even thinking about the color of the L.A. sky when I chose the pantone for the paper
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That looks like it. Yeah, with a little less pollution. Yeah, a little less pollution. So you told me that
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these books or this book can be bought at LACMA. Yeah, the LACMA website
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or at my website or it's christenbedford.com. Just as it's spelled with an I, not an E
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Yes. Kristenbedford.com. And then my Instagram is Kristen Bedford also. Kristen underscore Bedford
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Yeah. But I'll be like one of the first, you know, there's not too many
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And the other thing is I'm very responsive to everybody, whether it's on Instagram or email
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I always write back to people and engage with people. So there you go, guys
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You heard it here. All right. If you have any questions, you want Kristen's book
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You want her to sign the book? She is very responsive. Lackma will get you the book
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Kristen's website will get you the book and signed. And I'll write you and ask you do you want it inscribed
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And do you want it inscribed? So please reach out to her. Her Instagram is Kristen underscore Bedford
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and she is one of the most talented auto photographers that we have in the area
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