HappySad Souvenirs is a series of photographs taken in 2018 and 2019 during Hiller’s travels through China, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan and Vietnam.

HappySad Souvenirs is a documentary of cityscapes and artificial landscapes designed to make people happy, like amusement parks, colourful statues or just a subway station painted completely pink. It demonstrates an effort by people to escape from everyday life for a moment; a break from reality. But sometimes the escape fails and these alternative, colourful worlds become a new normal. This makes all of these happy places full of melancholia and sometimes even sadness.

“Within these HappySad moments and souvenirs of places (some of which no longer exist anymore), I found poetry that reminds me of a dream, a memory, or maybe even childhood.”

Artist Bio
Paul Hiller, born in 1984 in Germany, is a professional photographer and artist. He first graduated as a photo lab manager and then got his diploma at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (class of Prof. Klaus vom Bruch, new media). His photographs are not only shown in solo and group exhibitions in Germany and Europe, but they are also being displayed in many international print and online art platforms. His work is part of the so-called straight photography. He celebrates the art and the techniques of photography by shooting on analog film cameras only.