Jerry Hsu’s How About Never: 176 Pages of Los Angeles Beyond Skateboarding
Published by MACK in August 2026, How About Never brings together Jerry Hsu’s Los Angeles photographs made since 2011. Explore the images, the edit and the difference between the US$65 standard edition and the signed version.
Jerry Hsu’s photobook How About Never was published by MACK in August 2026, bringing together images he has made in Los Angeles since 2011 across 176 pages. The San Jose-born skateboarder and photographer does not organize the city into a list of landmarks. Instead, street corners, bodies, flowers and overlooked objects form a viewing route shaped by personal feeling. For readers familiar with his skate videos or Sci-Fi Fantasy clothing, the book offers another way into his work.
A Los Angeles photobook, or a personal narrative?
Los Angeles is the location, but the work does not aim to provide a comprehensive introduction to the city. In a recent interview, Hsu explained that he set a geographical boundary for the edit, then arranged the sequence outward from five or six foundational images, gradually building relationships between pictures. A street photograph becomes more than the capture of a striking instant: it is also a fragment of a long period of living. Notice how neighboring pages change an image’s meaning, rather than immediately seeking an explanation of the event in every frame.
In one photograph, smoke rising from a street corner changes the tension between road markings, a red pedestrian signal and traffic in the distance. A pink flower beside a bathroom sink draws attention back to close-range light and surfaces. The scales differ sharply, yet both introduce an incongruous focal point into an everyday setting. These are existing photographs associated with the book, rather than images of a current Los Angeles emergency. The cause of the smoke, street name and exposure date should not be inferred from the picture when unconfirmed.
A pink flower beside a sink makes everyday indoor surfaces the center of attention.
How does photography keep its own rhythm beyond skateboarding?
Hsu became a professional skateboarder at sixteen, left his sponsorship arrangements around 2017 and later developed an art project into Sci-Fi Fantasy. Much of the book was photographed between 2019 and 2025, but his photography did not begin only after professional skating ended. What becomes interesting alongside those two practices is his attention to surroundings. A street is more than a route to a destination: edges, obstacles and fleeting actions can be reorganized into an image.
In the interview, he described how a photograph’s importance often emerges with time, making repeated returns to the archive part of the work. How About Never therefore need not be read as a sequence of scenes with immediate answers. A fence and a perched bird at sunset, or gray covering lifted by the wind beside a pavement, can first be approached through lines, weight and empty space. The private meaning these pictures hold for the artist can remain distinct from a viewer’s interpretation, without turning every object into a fixed symbol.
A fence and a perched bird at sunset divide street space through diagonal lines and backlight.Gray covering lifts in the wind beside the street, showing folded surfaces; the covered object’s function is not identified.
The format, editions and current availability
The debossed hardcover measures 20.5 × 27.5 cm. Its green cover carries the title vertically, offering a quiet contrast with the detail of the photographs inside. MACK’s US site lists the unsigned edition at US$65 and the signed edition at US$70. The signed version includes an extra image plate signed by Hsu and glued inside the back cover; it should not be assumed to be a signature on the title page. The unsigned edition keeps the focus on the images and sequence; readers seeking the artist’s signature should note the plate’s placement and the edition’s contents.
The green hardcover of How About Never retains its original title and author lettering.
The official page currently reports high demand and temporary lack of stock, accepting orders with an estimated arrival in early November. The signed edition is marked sold out. This is the publisher’s current supply information, rather than a guaranteed delivery date. Check editions and delivery regions on MACK’s official How About Never page. The US$65 price belongs to the US site; regional pricing, shipping and taxes should be confirmed at checkout. To choose an edition, look through the publisher’s sample spreads and consider the physical size and sequence of the book.
