Can happiness be captured in a photograph? With No Pleasure Cruise Sjoerd Houben reflects on how we perceive and experience happiness, and the drive to control it. Government and advertising try to push forward a linear idea of happiness. Contrariwise, Houben understands happiness as a rhizome that may take many different forms. His photography is a studious approach to the paradoxes of interpretation of the theme, portraying diverse personages and their stories within a broader social narrative. For example, happiness as seen through beauty, ageing, memory, youth, the human body or emotion. Houben’s work holds individual experience at its core; however, the theme and concept tie together these experiences into a cohesive unit. concepts find their way back into the image.