ADAM ZHU FOR ISSUE 8
Having lived on the island of Manhattan his entire life, Adam Zhu grew up fast, as most East Village kids do. Catching the subway on his own from the ripe age of 11 was the norm. This opened his eyes to the world of skating, which then led him to the underground cultural movements of the city and its art scenes. I discovered Adam from his body of work, Nice Daze, a photo book published by PARADIGM Publishing (RIP), at the end of my NYC trip back in 2022. The book features the culmination of seven years of his photographic work from 2013 to 2020, and documents his coming of age experience in downtown New York. I’ve always wondered what it might be like to grow up in the big apple, so it was pretty cool to be able to ask these questions to a proper city kid and suss out how that place in the world shaped him. Adam’s got this sense of rawness and authenticity about him, especially around his creative practice. Even though he’s released a photo book, he doesn’t consider himself a photographer, and he works a day job to relieve pressure from his creativity so that he can maintain freedom to work on personal interests. I think that’s a real cool thing. Enjoy the read, it’s one of my faves. Although it’s a slither of a slice, you can get the full cake here.
WANDERER: So what's the daily routine for you living in New York?
ADAM: For me, living in New York on a day off, I'll typically wake up between like 10 and noon if I have nothing to do haha. It's hard to say what a typical day would be but lately I've been enjoying going on a run or doing something active first thing in the morning, taking some time in my day for myself by maybe meditating a bit, getting my shit together. I use the morning and early afternoon for errands or whatever I have to do. And then I'll get coffee, meet up with friends. Often if I have nothing going on in the afternoon I like to cook, so I'll make food and have friends over and sometimes it turns into a dinner party. That's pretty typical for me. If the weather's nice, I'll maybe go to Tompkins and skate around. So I'll skate or cook or maybe if there's an art opening at night, I'll check it out. I always try to stay active in what's going on culturally in New York. So if there's anything worth going to, I'll check it out. Like an art opening or a party or something like that. But I've been enjoying more intimate dinner parties, that kind of thing. Not going out and partying too much.
I know New York has such extreme weather conditions. In the winter it's so snowy and then in the summer it's so hot. Do you feel like that determines a lot of what you do in a day?
Yeah, 100%. I think that our extremes in weather define us as New Yorkers. I've always said that it creates quite well-rounded people and I kind of view the seasons as signifiers of growth. Like, every spring is like a reawakening. At the end of fall it's like time to focus. And then winter is like work. So things are always changing and shifting. I think in New York, the summer is this explosive, colourful, lively place to be and we reserve a lot of our social energy for the summer. Summer is a time where you're always outside, you're always interacting with people. And then the winter is more our time to be more solitary and in smaller groups and focus on something. For example, I grew up skating, but because we have winters here I have more diverse interests than maybe your typical LA skater or somebody where the weather's always nice, right? I've always associated a constant in weather with a bit of stagnancy. I mean, the reason why we in New York have the best summers is because we suffered through the winter. So because we have those extremes, when it's nice out, we really appreciate it. So we really take advantage of the summer and the good weather because of that. Where in places like LA where the weather's always nice, people really just take it for granted.
Living in New York your whole life, what was it like growing up there for you? Like for some kids, they'd go to the beach all the time and that was their childhood thing. What would you say was your childhood thing growing up?
For me the obvious one is skateboarding. I grew up in the East Village and I was always into art and music, but skating and finding my independence through skating was very, very central to my identity and my understanding of New York City and life in general. And the reason is because, me being like 11 or 12 which is kind of when you're first allowed to take the train or public transportation by yourself and be out and about on your own, having skateboarding as part of that experience really opened my eyes up to it. I felt like I had a whole different universe outside of what my classmates were aware of. In New York City obviously it's street skating, so you're in the streets. And, reflecting back, it's fascinating how by an early age I had been to all the boroughs and all types of places in New York. And, of course, because of that I've been exposed to a lot more different things. For example, not many people are just taking the subway 45 minutes to like Flushing, Queens for a public park or random architectural structure. You know what I mean? You end up in really random places and you experience the city differently because the way you're navigating through it is different. And on top of that, my views on inclusivity and skating are very...you know, I'm not ageist. Like I would be 12, hanging out with an 18-year-old or like a 40-year-old, and people from all different economic and cultural backgrounds. So skating really opened my eyes to...
All the different ways of life?
Yeah. And, like I said, I always just felt like I had a whole universe that was outside of school and I made most of my friends through skateboarding, not through school. So I feel like all together that gave me a really unique experience growing up. And fortunately I was in the East Village so there was very good access to skate culture, art, music... I grew up in such a cultural neighbourhood.
Was it typical for someone of that age, like 11 or 12, to be out there skating alone? Were there many people from your school at that point who were doing the same kind of thing?
Well, definitely compared to my classmates I was far more independent, and I credit that to skateboarding. And that comes with bad as well, of course. Like from a parent's perspective—I was like 12 and smoking weed already in the park, hanging out with older kids and that would be probably shocking to not only my classmates, but my parents and teachers. So I had my crew of kids that were close to my age. It wasn't like I was the only one, but I definitely started early. For a good portion of my life, I do recall being the youngest most of the time.
How have you seen New York change over time? Particularly in the art scene, like from when you were a kid to now.
I always try to avoid being overly pessimistic about this sort of question. Obviously New York has changed a lot with gentrification, especially in the East Village. I said I wasn't gonna be pessimistic, but I mean, in the East Village where I grew up and in the Lower East Side, I think gentrification and the rise in price of living here has negatively impacted the arts, for sure. When I was a kid—even if maybe I caught the tail end of it—there was a really cool DIY art scene in the East Village, in Lower East Side because rent wasn't absurd, there would be like small punk shows in the back of cafes or art shows and basically those spaces are fewer and far harder to come by. Just because the way you have to dedicate yourself to making a space like that work now, it takes away from the culture of it because it's not as easy. You gotta think about how to make something lucrative or how to keep your space up and running. So there's less of these open spaces that are just free to share something or express something. Because if you're a band, it's like the promoter or venue needs to make ticket sales. If you're a gallery, you need to move art to sell it. Which is always the case, but I think the added pressure of how expensive everything is makes it less of a place that is easy for young people and creative people to flock to. Like the harder it gets, the slower the creative scene moves because New York is also defined by people that come here and whatnot. So as it gets more difficult, especially in Manhattan, we're seeing less of these organic-underground scenes pop up. But not none—you know there's always gonna be culture and people are always going to look towards New York for culture. But gentrification and whatnot is definitely a threat to the culture that I identify with New York. It's difficult.
I've heard that that kind of DIY stuff is moving more to Brooklyn. Is that the case? Is that what's happening now?
Yeah, although even Brooklyn is expensive as well. Me being such a Manhattan kid, I'm not so in tune with Brooklyn but I will say in Manhattan it's nearly impossible to have an organic, underground scene right now. Sorry. Let me take that back. It's not impossible, but naturally people are gonna be moving towards Brooklyn because there's just more space and it's easier for young people to move to Brooklyn than to Manhattan. So wherever young people are going that's where you're gonna see these scenes pop up. So Brooklyn definitely has nightlife and stuff like that and these underground scenes.
Being an Australian, you watch all the TV shows and media and it's made out that growing up in New York you start going out to bars from like 14, 15, 16. Is that all true?
Well, yeah. But in my experience growing up we weren't interested in going to the bar or club. I think perhaps that's one of the reasons why young people tend to create these underground scenes and why it's something special—because we're creating space outside of where we're not welcome. So we're gonna create our own thing and work with what we've got. So the more we reject those spaces and create our own thing, I feel like that's a really special time. So, certainly, yes. You grow up fast in New York. Like, I was definitely drinking and smoking weed at an early age, but I don't think it was till I was like 16 to 18 that I was really interested in being at a bar or a club. Up until then it was more just on the street, in the park or at somebody's house.
Besides taking photos, what else do you do and how did you find yourself within the creative scene?
Well, the reason why I wanted to share that project [Nice Daze] is because it was a genuine, organic documentation of what I felt it was like being around a lot of culture growing up and that was really personal and important to me. Growing up in the East Village and Lower East Side, we're exposed to a lot of culture. And being in New York specifically, it's pretty incredible the way that, if you pick up an interest, you can meet your idol. You know what I mean? You can really be exposed to the core of that culture very quickly. Like if I was into skating, I'm at the centre of a very important skate scene. If I get into music, there's all types of niche scenes and things to get into. And I think being into music scenes and art exposed me to more of downtown culture than just skateboarding. Like graffiti, hip hop, whatever. And me just having a wide eye for all these scenes and interests and having a diverse friend group across those different subcultures really defined the material in the book. But, you know, this was, for the most part, me just stepping out with a point and shoot camera and documenting what was happening around me because I was part of it. Through being uniquely around a lot of those different subcultures, I think people started to realise that I could help bring those together, and that's how I started creating art shows or doing events or art direction for brands and stuff like that. And besides photography I've always been drawing, painting, collaging, some video stuff, printing and some tattoo stuff sometimes for fun. But I think a lot of what people think of when they think of me, it's also just organising in the community. Whether it's an art show or a concert or a party or a video screening, those are all things I tend to be involved in.
Just from word of mouth kind of thing? You never went to do any further education or anything like that?
No. I dropped out of college so I never completed any higher education. It was a combination of growing up skating and then as I got older being in underground music scenes and art scenes as well. And also the most important thing is just me being young and very inspired by what was happening.
I feel like there's a certain naive attitude you have to have where you throw yourself into things and then look back and you're like, oh, how did, how did I get here?
Yeah. No, for sure. And I think because I bridged a lot of those communities people just thought of me... once you do one thing, the ball kind of rolls, right? I remember, within art, one of my first opportunities was curating an art show. My friend {Aurel Schmid} ran a gallery called Romeo and she let me curate a show. Before that I made kind of a skate video that was inspired by these New York mix tapes where they combined original music with skating. I had some friends that were musicians that were making amazing music so I had this video premiere where I had the musicians perform. Being around all that scene and wanting to be a part of it, wanting to share it, was my instinct and why it was so natural that I got into documentation (taking photos), which is A lot of what is in Nice Daze. I never thought so hard about it at the time…not until later in life. What happened was my computer crashed. So I had all these film negatives laying around and I just left them in a corner for a few years. And then one day I was like, You know what? I need to rescan all these negatives. And then when I did that I had this emotional experience where I was just like, Wow, I'm so thankful to have all this, all these photos. I think they’re special and I'm having this reaction from looking at this stuff and I hope that other people might as well, despite how personal it is, I hope that people can appreciate that energy.
From Australia, there's this perspective where it seems like you go to New York to get to the core of an industry. Do you feel as though there's an expectation in the air there to be working on a million different things because of this focus?
Adam: Oh yeah, for sure. I personally feel that pressure a lot just because I have a lot of different interests. But certainly there's a grinding culture here in New York that we're all raised in. And because we're exposed to so much, a lot of my friends that grew up here all share in common that we're torn between a lot of these different interests. It almost can feel like you're being spread thin. I'm definitely in that boat 'cause I shape shift with what I do. When people ask me what I do I have quite a rough time answering. I definitely wouldn't be like, ‘Oh, I'm a photographer.’ You know what I mean? Certain people, they're aware of Nice Daze but to me it's an extension of my art practice which is just the most significant body of work I've shared so far. But I hope to provide context and a wider image or understanding of what my work encompasses as I continue. So for me it's just like, onto the next project. But I think it's something that we all struggle on—honing in on [interests]. And I think that it's unfortunate actually that because of the pressures to be successful, to make money, that we can't freely explore these creative interests without the end goal of monetizing it. And that is partly what robs people of their creativity, is that they need to have some practical thing that they're pursuing that makes sense for a career. Which, I believe in exploring different interests and sharing things, I’ve always said that and I've always tried to live by that, and I do have a day job, which is creative, but it means I don't have to pursue being a photographer full time. And that's fortunate for me, because of that I don't necessarily have to compromise or do things that I don't feel aligned with.
Read the rest in issue 8 :)
