Kustomland: The Custom Car Photography of James Potter, 1955-1959

In the late 1950s, as designers from the Big Three became more daring, their do-it-yourself counterparts in the custom-car world found that the new designs from Detroit worked exceptionally well with custom treatments like shaving, lowering, “lakes pipes,” and the ever-wilder custom painting of the day—aesthetics that would come to dominate this peak custom car era. Professional freelance photographer James Potter captured the epicenter of this landmark scene in what was then suburban Los Ang…