shashasha

Drawing from a catalogue of photographs taken in China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and Vietnam in 2018 and 2019, German photographer Paul Hiller’s photobook “HappySad Souvenirs” draws a bittersweet picture of amusement parks in Asia. Artificially designed and built as spaces to make people happy and allow them to escape their every lives for a few hours, the amusement parks shift in tone and atmosphere in Hiller’s photographs, turning strangely serene and melancholic, at times even sad. With humor but not condescension, Hiller’s amusing and fascinating pastel-colored photographs recontexualize already strange places to ask deeper questions about happiness, modernity and reality. Perhaps more crucial, Hiller’s photographs themselves offer a brief surreal respite from everyday life.