Seu Trinh is a skate photographer who still loves skateboarding and the feeling you get from capturing something beautiful on film. He has been an inspiration for me and countless other skate photographers in the business. I am lucky to have worked in the building with him and felt him tap me on the shoulder to say that I was ‘improving’ in my photography and to keep with it. He might not have known that those words meant that much to me, but I can tell you here in these pages, that they did.
Seu’s humble, relaxed and encouraging demeanour is the reason I wanted to pair him up with Samarria Brevard for this issue. As I told them both, “Your energies match up, as opposed to mine which is always loud and rather unquiet.” For those that know me that is putting it quite diplomatically. I consider them both amazing human beings and I’m glad that I could bring them together for this issue.
Seu Trinh was born in Saigon, Vietnam and left at age two, and felt little of the ‘parking the car in Haavard Yaad’ before parental transplanting brought him to the City of Angels where he was raised from age seven onwards. Seu and I have had a much longer discussion of race, particularly when I interviewed him for my PhD. Those conversations involve discussions of creating a dream ‘Return to the motherland’ tour with other Vietnamese skaters like Que Nguyen, Don ‘the NUGE’ Nguyen.
We’ve recollected his early days with Neighborhood skateboards, the early Latinx/Hispanic and Chicano skateboarding company from the 1990s. The brand was proudly POC co-owned and directed by Julio de La Cruz and Armando Barajas. Seu was the first young photographer to jump in the van with the young ragtag bunch on their first tour with only a few shirts and pants in a duffle bag. As an Asian American photographer, Seu often reflected on US racial politics early on. As with most people of color in the US he was forced to make decisions about the friendships he forged when they crossed racial boundaries. Seu had the strength to push against detractors who felt intercultural and interracial friendships would only lead to further ostracization. Jumping in the van was a political act even though he might have been too young to fully realize the journey it would bring him on.
Skateboarding is luckier for it.
This section is taken from a longer dialogue between the two of us. We discussed the pandemic and how he keeps it moving; his awareness on the fluidity of race and power, our shared humanity and reveals and how easily becoming a member of a dominant group can make marginalization of others seem natural. I hope you enjoy the view behind the lens of the fantastic, Seu Trinh.
Interview by NEFTALIE WILLIAMS
Portrait by ERIK BRAGG
Published in November 2020
Seu it is so good to talk to you. I just wanted to check in and ask you a few things about this crazy year. How have you been holding up?
I’m good and I really have been staying off social media, that’s the main thing. Just not spending all the time I was on before, it just gets to be overwhelming. Not just the good/bad news but even just in skateboarding, you can lose a lot of time there. It also can make you stressed just seeing everything that is happening online, and the tone people use. So, staying off social media except for a little post here and there can make you feel better.
No, I totally understand that. I tried to cut back some too and just focus on work. As I told you this issue is focused on looking at race politics, and you and I had a much longer discussion for the book, but I wanted to bring in a little of that conversation in the wake of the BLM movement and the change in tone around the topic of people of color. You and I have talked about you always moving through people’s ideas of race early on. You got in the van and went out with Neighborhood in the ‘90s. You said you felt a kinship with them even though you were Asian American specifically Vietnamese American. You said you were all from the same lower economic space so it felt natural and like a group you could relate to.
Yes, I related to those guys and as I said in the old interview, I felt like we were all on the same page and we bonded. They pushed me and I pushed them, and we found out about each other and the similarities from being people in LA who didn’t have much, but loved skateboarding. That was the beginning of my career.
Thinking through the role of the tour and where we are now with trying to come to grips with the George Floyd murder and the uprisings, has that made you think about our relationships in skateboarding or in the US differently?
You know what I realized with everything happening? It’s something that I have known for a while, but we feel differently because we are in California and in the cities. When we are in those safe spaces, we are Vietnamese American, African American, Latino or Hispanic American but that’s in the hip cities.
Yes, there are more defined groups of people.
Yeah, in those places we get to break down our individual identity and say who we are or who we feel—how we identify you know? We can go deeper into it.
We can name ourselves and our identity.
But the things happening with the murders and all the shootings of Black people and just the harassment of people of color in general reminds me that when we go into places that aren’t the cities, all those titles African American Asian American, Latinx, etc—in those places we lose the ‘American’, we are just reduced to whatever someone views you as and that’s it. Their interpretation is how they treat you. That can make us feel fear and they feel the way they do and just see it as their right to act accordingly rather than looking to your individual voice. You are just something… else. Something different and people are not afraid to remind you of it.
Yes, there is so much power in that.
You definitely can feel when it shifts, and you lose the ‘American part’ which is supposed to bond us all together.
Can you tell me an example when you felt that?
I remember being on tour in an American state with Steve Berra. It was just obvious that even though this was a ‘bigger city’ it was in [American state] and it might have well just been in the woods. People were staring at me and you could just tell they were not thinking, “Oh this guy is Asian American, they were just thinking –whoa Asian guy here, in our restaurant.”
I know how that is. It can be pretty rough.
Steve said something about it too, he knew they were ‘noticing’ and of course I did too. I was the only ‘Asian’ guy in the restaurant, and they were just trying to figure out how he might know me too, how could we be together. It was just crazy to be in the US and be looked at like you were something else. Losing the ‘American’ part of you just from visiting a different part of the US, it was pretty wild.
I have encountered that. You are just now something different to be looked at and interpreted and it might just be you in the most mundane place. Now that was in a more rural place but still with a big population. Did you feel it in other places where people might not expect it? Or most importantly where you didn’t expect it?
Yeah, in Huntington Beach. That’s not ‘middle America’ that’s on the coast. I had lots of experiences there.
Ahh that’s when you get into that ‘everyday racism’ where people do things and just don’t even realize it and that they are flexing the power they have.
Shooting there and being there, you can feel so sketched out. People say things or point out that you are the ‘only person of color’ that is there.
Yeah you already know that. You don’t need anyone to point it out.
Yeah, we are well aware (laughing), it’s not cool to say stuff like that. However, I learned not to let it affect me or my work but it’s there. The biggest thing is sometimes people might not mean it, but it’s not cool.
That is what we talked about before –people who have the power and privilege to bring things up and try to make you feel small or out of place. It really does happen a lot to all people of color. Someone is always proud to tell you how “hey, you are the only POC here”—singling out your otherness because they aren’t feeling ‘othered’ or just in case you forgot.
You know in those instances I just learned to grow a thick skin—especially if they are trying to do it to belittle you—you just don’t let them win. You just move on and you try to let it go. There are good and bad people everywhere and that’s just global.
Yes, it is. I know that you travel a lot and I wanted readers to get a feel about how race and racial politics are fluid in different contexts.
Well I can tell you something interesting. First off, I went to Japan in the beginning of the year for a few months and it was so great, it’s just an amazing place. One of the things that is the most interesting is when I was there, I’m part of the majority (laughing). You really feel that difference.
That happened to me in South Africa, it is just a total switch.
Yeah, it is. In Japan, you see other Asian people and so you see yourself and it’s freeing. People aren’t staring at you for being Asian, they are honestly checking you out (laughing). Seeing your clothes and your style etc, it’s just different to be viewed that way.
You get a little bit of a real break.
Yes, you are just loving through the airport and the train and you are the majority, you are not sticking out. I stayed there for a few months and it was just a good break.
I’m sure it was great and let you breathe a bit easier. There is so much stress in the US sometimes that you don’t realize it until you leave.
Yes (laughing). Let me tell you—while I was there, I still got to see racism and discrimination. Like I said earlier it is everywhere. I felt totally comfortable there and didn’t stick out. People just thought I was Japanese, but after a while I saw how they discriminated against other Asian people.
It is totally the same in Cuba, South Africa, and Brazil, every country finds someone to scapegoat.
Dude, the thing that’s crazy is that I saw how seductive it can be to be in the dominant group. When you are the majority you can leave people out or discriminate—it’s just the way people act and pretend it’s nothing. Since no one knew I wasn’t Japanese, I saw and heard people say negative things about Korean people and other Asians. Then I thought, whoa it really happens everywhere.
Each country deals with it and tells its own story of why someone should be the outgroup. That’s why I tried to have a bunch of different stories in this issue. Hopefully, people see that we are in the systems that try to separate us, but we do have skateboarding as a way and a reason to try to bring us together.
Yes. We do have skateboarding and it’s been a good way to come together.
Well that’s why I wanted to introduce you to Samarria this issue because I knew you two would get along so well. You both are good hearted people and I know you would bring out the best in each other.
I saw that she was the first Black woman on Enjoi and that is cool, I’m excited to shoot with her. In the end you know I just always get excited about skateboarding. Meeting new skaters is great and making new photos is a good time. I always get stoked taking the time driving around and getting to know them, seeing what they like. You start there and don’t even know how long you have been friends for because of skating.
It’s timeless. New people just come in and join the family. Samarria is next.
That’s right. We will get the photos done.
I know you will. I have full faith.
[Editor’s note: As predicted the two of them met in LA, ate lunch, and had smoothies at Seu’s house where he created her portraits. Their rapport built during the shoot and bonded them both. Samarria was previously on a heavy skate mission and of course Seu had a great suggestion for where to skate that would make a great skate photo. A testament to the skills they both possess the entire session was knocked out in an afternoon and they became fast friends… as tends to happen in skateboarding.]
IG: @seutrinh
Shop our 6th issue, an educational issue about race HERE.
