The Evolutions of Jerry Hsu

All of Jerry Hsu’s pictures are self-portraits. Pink and white flowers strewn in a chain-link fence to make a heart. Hellish plumes of smoke in plain daylight. And car wrecks, most memorably an SUV tipped on its side, the soft red glow of its taillights cradling a “4A POEM” plate. He’s rarely, if ever, in-frame, but there in feeling. Just wait for it.

The San Jose-born photographer and skateboarder has a near sixth sense when it comes to capturing these sobering ironies of life, many of which land across the pages of How About Never, his latest book with MACK. Shot over the last 15 years, the project maps Hsu’s inner world through the love and loss that comes with a city as complicated as Los Angeles, where he’s lived since 2011, and what it means to make it home.

Early photo blogs and titles, like Table for One or The Beautiful Flower Is the World, too, poke at humanity’s chaotic, often funny, underbelly. But this book, the first dedicated to his film practice, is also his most personal project yet. “There’s a level of isolation I felt living there. I think that’s relatable to a lot of people,” he says, reflecting on his experience in LA through its making. Flipping through its pages, where there’s decay, there’s rebirth. If there’s violence, forgiveness isn’t far off. Just as isolation is the feeling of walking an empty block, it’s also alchemized into intimacy, like being let in on a secret.

When you think of Hsu, a number of other portraits come to mind. He went pro at 16, and came into photography through artists skate magazines sent to shoot him and his friends. Skateboarding handed him the reins to his environment, and allowed him to take in the world on his own terms, an outlook that, paired with an appetite for risk, would be useful in front of and behind the camera. In 2017, he made a hasty exit from his pro career, dropping his sponsors in search of the art venture that would eventually become his label, Sci-Fi Fantasy. Most of his days are spent running the company, and while he wishes he had more time for his photography, it’s perhaps a subconscious effort, he muses, of protecting another practice from becoming all-consuming.

Told through luminous fragments, the book, much like LA, offers a more nuanced portrait of who we know Hsu, the artist, to be, beyond the weight of his skating career. It was love, after all, that brought him to the city, with his marriage, from its beginning to end, being one of its secret narratives. It wasn’t until time to piece it together that more contours of his last 15 years — contradiction, hope, and heartbreak — came to light. “I’ve noticed that most photographs take a lot of time for their importance to emerge,” Hsu says. “That’s something that I always need to remind myself when I get photos back: Maybe I just don’t see it yet.”

For this edition of Through the Lens, Hsu came by the Hypebeast office to tell us about How About Never’s over-a-decade in the making, how skateboarding and photography go hand-in-hand, dream projects, and finding the courage to finally let go.

“You do need to experience a lot of pain and break down in order to become something else.”

Hypebeast: What’s the story behind the title?

Jerry Hsu: I’ve had “How About Never” for over 15 years. I don’t know where it came from, but I always liked the ring of it. It’s a little bit funny and speaks to rejection. It matched what I was trying to say even when I didn’t really know what it was yet.

What are those messages, or underlying themes, throughout the book?

Transformation. There’s a lot of destruction and deterioration, opposing forces, like fire and water. To me, those represent transformation because you do need to experience a lot of pain and break down in order to become something else.

I didn’t know it was going to be a book at first. I began editing it five years ago, and honestly it didn’t make a lot of sense to me until very recently. I realized that these images represented my emotional state during my time in LA and my relationship with my [now ex] wife. We started dating when I moved and separated when it was complete. Our relationship is a secret narrative in the book. A lot of the images are proxies of how I was feeling, whether it was happiness or despair.

Another theme is hope. Especially the last photo, it’s of a cat jumping. I wanted to end it with something that represented moving forward, like a playfulness, a mysteriousness about the future.

It takes place over the course of 15 years. How did you decide which works were going to make the cut?

I set a geographical parameter, LA, which is something I don’t normally do, and really helped lock in this edit. I started with five or six foundational images that spoke to what I wanted to say. I spread them out on the floor, and filled in the space in between. After that, more narratives started to present themselves. And the book is definitely not about Los Angeles at all. It’s just about my experience there.

“I’ve noticed that most photographs take a lot of time for their importance to emerge…That’s something that I always need to remind myself when I get photos back: Maybe I just don’t see it yet.

When it comes time to shoot, do you just happen upon these scenes, or do they involve some sort of stakeout?

It’s stuff that I happen upon, but I dedicate days to shooting. I’ll get in my car, drive somewhere, park, and just walk around. It’s about trying to get out there and hoping something will come your way. Days and days can go by where you don’t get anything. It requires tolerance for a lot of failure.

Is that patience innate to you, or is it something you picked up by way of skateboarding or photography?

It’s a mix of everything. The connection to skateboarding is pretty obvious — it involves a tremendous amount of failure — but then again, I’m the one who became a skateboarder, I’m the one who chose this type of photography. I guess it’s inside me. I never really thought about it like that. I become obsessed, and if that’s the cost of what I want, I’m willing to pay it.

You’re translating that discipline into your art practice.

I realized I loved skateboarding because no matter what painful experience I went through, all I could think about was getting back out there. I’ve tried to film something dangerous, got hurt, had to get surgery for it, and then I’d go back out and finish it. I would think about it for six months until it was done and out of my life.

What does it feel like to land on a shot you’re happy with?

It’s pretty exhilarating. But what makes a photo important to me has more to do with time. Sometimes you get something, and immediately you know it’s going to be a hit, but I’ve noticed that most photographs take a lot of time for their importance to emerge. I’ll go through my archive and look at things hundreds and hundreds of times, and it’ll take years for something to present itself to me. That’s something that I always need to remind myself when I get photos back: maybe I just don’t see it yet.

What’s the timeline between parting with sponsors, starting Sci-Fantasy, and focusing more on your photography?

I’ve always taken photography seriously, in a personal way, not in a professional way. Around 2017, I became a little unhappy and a little restless with being a professional skateboarder. I kind of hastily quit everything. In retrospect, I didn’t need to be that dramatic. That’s how Sci-Fi Fantasy happened. It started as an art project, then slowly became what it is today. At that time, I was skateboarding a bit less, and I spent more time photographing. That’s definitely when the bulk of this book was made, from 2019 to 2025.

Going pro at such an early age, you’ve spent most of your life in front of the camera. Do you feel any sense of relief when you’re behind it?

To be honest, it’s kind of been the same. I did feel some type of relief when I “retired.” Being a pro skateboarder as a kid was a gift, and I really do have such a deep appreciation for it. But I also got sick of it. I needed to challenge myself in a different way, to be a little happier.

How does photography fit in your day-to-day now?

I spend most of my time running Sci-Fi. I replaced pro skateboarding with this company, and it’s funny because, when I was a pro skater, I always wanted to be out taking photos. I had all the time in the world to do that, but then I started a brand. Now I’m in the office wishing I was outside taking photos. Something is always in the way of me doing photography all the time. Maybe subconsciously, I’m protecting it from becoming everything that I do, so it doesn’t negatively consume me. But that’s just a theory.

It’s important to keep your passions precious.

Skateboarding becoming my job was a dream come true, but it came at a cost. I wasn’t able to enjoy it in the way I used to. When I quit, it was fun to go skateboarding with my friends and not have to think about being good. It brought me back to that original feeling of skateboarding.

“This book made me deal with that self-doubt: Face it and try to let go.”

Getting into set-up, how did you gain your technical chops? What’s your go-to gear?

I was getting into photography as a teenager, and I learned through people I worked with — friends and other photographers from magazines and companies. They were the experts, so I’d ask them questions. I also just took a couple classes at community college and have been using the same equipment since then.

The cameras that I use the most are a Nikon F4, a Leica M7, and a Contax T3. I’m not a gear person, but I enjoy using those the most, and I just kind of stuck with it.

Nowadays, I don’t take much influence from skateboard photographers, but being around them helped me so much.

Who are some of your inspirations nowadays?

I look at a lot of Japanese and Scandinavian photographers; they’ve really influenced How About Never. One person in particular is JH Engstrom; he’s a Swedish photographer, and I really love the feeling of his work.

If time and resources were abundant, what’s a dream project of yours?

My parents are from Taiwan, and I dream of doing a long-term project there. I’ve never lived there. As a kid, when I was being really bad, my mom would say, ‘If you don’t shape up, we’re gonna move back to Taiwan,’ which was very scary to hear. As I got older, I really started to feel this distant connection to it, like how many people live in this in-between space — here is home, but you’re never quite 100%, and over there it’s even worse.

I’m at that age where I’m becoming more drawn to my heritage. The child-of-immigrant stuff may be tiresome for some people, but I’ve been looking through a lot of my old things and have been fantasizing about my family and experience growing up.

How have you seen yourself grow as an artist through How About Never?

It helped me be less afraid. It took so many years of overcoming a certain fear to release this kind of work in this way. It’s so personal to me. This book made me deal with that self-doubt: Face it and try to let go. It also helped me grow as a person, to have the courage to express myself honestly.

Now that you’re on the other side of that, do you see yourself continuing to put out such personal work?

That’s probably the only type of work I’m gonna put out from now. Maybe it’ll get even more personal.

How About Never is now available via MACK. All photos by Jerry Hsu. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.