Photographer Benji Hsu First Learned His Craft While Shooting With a Nintendo DS

AGE: 22
BASED IN: New York
NOMINATED BY: Lyle Ashton Harris

Growing up, the first camera I used was the one on the back of the Nintendo DS. I can remember taking photos of my younger siblings during car trips to Los Angeles. I must have been 6 or 7 then. I don’t know when I first noticed this, but my desire to remember led me to documenting. Most importantly, I wanted to preserve the feelings those memories evoked.

[Inspiration] comes from my love for the people I hold close to me: lovers, family, friends, anyone that has had a personal impact on me. I’m not someone who opens up easily, so I hold those intimate connections in high regard. I think about seeing my mom navigate the U.S. as a diasporic individual—how her language barrier and accent were visible struggles I witnessed as a youth.

I am aware of the legacy of stereotypes and one-dimensionality that has been given to Asian Americans in the past. Broad questions of visibility are inherent in the ways I have reflected on my Taiwanese-American identity. The idea of the perpetual foreigner is deeply internalized as I think about what it means to be foreign in contrast to the false idea of assimilation.