Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with ChiaYu Hsu of Downtown

ChiaYu Hsu shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

ChiaYu, so good to connect and we’re excited to share your story and insights with our audience. There’s a ton to learn from your story, but let’s start with a warm up before we get into the heart of the interview. What’s more important to you—intelligence, energy, or integrity?
Integrity, by a long shot. A steadfast, honest person who owns their mistakes and is willing to be better is worth far more than someone with tomes of knowledge or endless energy. It also shows that they’re willing to be vulnerable and human, which makes for a reliable teammate, partner, or friend.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m ChiaYu, a made-in-Taiwan human who’s spent decades in the U.S. identifying as a designer, photographer, illustrator, minimalist, garage bicycle mechanic, and backpacking enthusiast. I run Hausfish LLC, a full-service graphic design studio, and its subsidiary, Pronounce Hsu, a photography brand that covers portraits, events, and product work.

Of the two brands, my photography service is what really scratches that creative itch. Seeing my work on the memory card after a long day of shooting feels like opening a present every time, and the process of culling and editing the photos to convey a narrative or vibe never gets old.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
Objective morality and the naive, black and white notion of “good” and “bad.”

It’s all subjective and relative to everyone’s unique lived experiences and perspectives. Every single person walking this earth has a story where they’re the good guy, and it’s fascinating. We’re all infinitely complex in our own ways. There isn’t a single “boring” person, and I find that mind-boggling.

That said, my only exception to this is the group of folks who actively and enthusiastically manipulate others for their own gain. Y’all need therapy. Live and let live; don’t be an asshole.

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
As someone who has struggled (and still struggles) with depression, I’ve hit rock bottom a few times. Those moments were a mix of relationship issues, career problems, and pent-up trauma all crashing in at the wrong time.

What I learned was that the discomfort, struggle, and cynicism were side effects of wanting to get better. Meditation and years of therapy helped, but a clinical trial involving psilocybin (aka shrooms) was what ultimately made the biggest shift for me. To summarize without sounding like a hippie, it was an enormous dose under guided supervision that cracked my headspace wide open and gave me perspective on a scale I’d never experienced.

That experience taught me that it’s okay to just be. Make an effort, have some fun, and let yourself feel the incredible loneliness and sadness of existence every now and then. We’ll all get off this ride eventually; it’s gonna be fine.

And if this was supposed to be about my profession, apologies for getting a bit heady, but the same principle applies: do your best, be kind, and remember that challenges are just experiences with some form of reward on the other side.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. How do you differentiate between fads and real foundational shifts?
Fads, especially now, are manufactured and manipulated by social media and corporations with a toxic FOMO mindset.

“If you don’t hop on that new fashion trend, you’ll get left in the dust!”
“Buy our product and it’ll make you cool like the models we spent $250k to style, shoot, and curate in our ads!”
“Be different, be hip, break the mold. Our stuff is [selling point], and if you buy it, you too can be ‘different’!”

Fads change on a nearly weekly, and sometimes even daily, basis. They’re vapid, shallow, and designed for quick sales.

Foundational shifts come from people’s desire to explore deeper aspects of humanity. A great example is the move toward lower production value videos and a conversational tone of voice in basically everything. People crave less polish because it feels more relatable. So much so that old digital cameras are now going for a premium on eBay, and there’s even a solid market for lenses salvaged from discarded point-and-shoot film cameras being mounted onto camera bodies worth thousands.

Fads aren’t my jam because I enjoy things that last. There’s so much more to be gained from relatability through shared experiences and narratives, and it gives us a chance to practice empathy, which is getting a little rare these days.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
That he gave a damn about people. I want the people I care about to feel that I cared. I want my clients to feel that I cared.

That’s why I do photography. One of the best feelings, to me, in the whole of my limited existence is helping someone melt away their insecurities in front of the camera and feel beautiful in their own skin. It’s the least we can do for each other.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pronouncehsu.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pronounce_hsu/
• Other: My design studio: https://hausfish.com/

Image Credits
Photos by Pronounce Hsu photography, all rights reserved.