San Jose’s Jerry Hsu hardly needs an introduction: ever since “Bag Of Suck” dropped, the “Asian Elvis” is one of the biggest names in skateboarding, and although he stated a few years ago that he wasn’t entirely serious about his photography, this is clearly not the case anymore. “I probably said I wasn’t serious because I didn’t want people to critique me,” he explains. “I am serious about it. I have lots of ideas and try to follow through with them and experiment. It’s actually a lot like skateboarding and how it can consume your thoughts and actions.”

Although Hsu’s been lucky with injuries lately and thus spends a lot of his time skating – “we just started the new Emerica video ‘Made 2,’ so I’ve been skating a lot,” he always tries to work on his “small projects,” as he calls them, and even had two shows last year at Family and M+B Gallery in L.A. The fact that he doesn’t “really sell photos ever” doesn’t bother him so much as the dilemma any photographer has to deal with nowadays: “I think for a lot of street/daily life/diary type photographers having cellphone cameras is a dilemma. I began using cellphone cameras in 2007 to take notes or to share a strange/humorous image with a friend. Pretty soon I realized there was a style and aesthetic to the pictures, which generally could be described as ‘one-liners’: Something brief and funny (or sometimes sad) that you didn’t have to think too hard about. I started to post them on a side bar of the Enjoi website and after that the artist Todd Bratrud suggested I turn them into my own blog which became nazigold.tumblr.com. So it became serious to me, and it definitely interfered with my regular photography habits. It is a strange thing to have to decide which device to use when you want to capture something. It slows down the whole process, which can ruin everything. In the end though they are all photographs.”

Still interested in candidness (“No, it’s not always easy to draw a line.”), he recently released a new zine entitled “Our Moment Together” (full of kids pointing their camera-phones at him) after finishing his first proper photo book “The Killing Season,” which chronicled a 3-week motorcycle trip through Vietnam. “I think it’s generally easier to be inspired to shoot photos in new environments,” he says about the experience. “The excitement and curiosity of a new place pushes you. At home you must rely on the strength of your ideas and break through monotony and your daily routine. ‘The Killing Season’ is a good example of how being in a strange place can help you shoot a lot and be excited. That trip was a great way to frame a photography series.”