"Jerry makes it look so easy. Every time I open this book, my camera gets heavier." — Daniel Arnold

Legendary skateboarder and artist Jerry Hsu started his blog NAZI GOLD in 2009 as a repository for the cell phone photos he’d been collecting alongside his more traditional photography and film practices: shots of friends and strangers, roadside curiosities, and anything else that seemed to merit instant sharing with both peers and the public. In the ensuing years, the site grew from an exercise in visual note-taking into a uniquely hysterical embodiment of both Hsu’s keen artistic sense and his razor-sharp wit. Documenting his journeys through the high and low trappings of our culture, Hsu’s work captures everything from bootleg t-shirts and bathroom stall graffiti to unexpected truths and the occasional startling moment of humanity. An unerringly creative and endlessly clever chronicle of the deep ironies of our modern world, The Beautiful Flower Is the World, now in a lush hardcover second edition, collects the best of Hsu’s blog photography into a compelling and immersive whole.

Details

ISBN13: 9781944860646
Format: Hardback
Number of Pages: 286
Edition: 2nd edition
Publication Date:
Publisher: Anthology Editions
Publication City, Country: Brooklyn, United States
Dimensions (cm): 241(H)x165(L)
Weight (gm):

Author Biography

Jerry Hsu is a photographer and professional skateboarder based in Los Angeles, California. As a photographer, he is noted for his early blogs, NAZI GOLD and Table for One. His work has appeared in publications including The New York Times Magazine, Vice, iGNANT, and Lodown Magazine; and he has exhibited in Sweden, Berlin, Los Angeles, New York, Prague, Milan and Tokyo. Prior to The Beautiful Flower Is the World, Hsu published numerous zines, as well as his first photography book, The Killing Season, in 2013.

Reviews

“Revelling in the coincidental and instances of human silliness, Hsu holds a hand-held lens up to society and translates the amusing banality that accompanies the sublime of the everyday.”  - Hero Magazine, 2019

"The Beautiful Flower Is the World is truly a book of its time. The birth of camera phones, and then phones with relatively decent cameras, enabled Hsu to take quick snapshots anywhere, effortlessly." - Photoeye, 2019

"Jerry Hsu’s latest photo book, The Beautiful Flower Is the World is weirdly and wonderfully human. The pro skater and photographer creates a compelling collection of art from photos shot entirely on mobile phones. The candid photos come from Hsu’s blog Nazi Gold, which was created back in 2009. The book is a visual journey into the unexpected, where elements of tragedy collide with the comical. He manages to find beauty and intrigue in what many of us would overlook as mundane and helps us see life’s absurdities.” - Acclaim, 2019