Thomas Sauvin
‘17 18 19’
by Thomas Sauvin, published by Void.
The series ‘17 18 19’ is drawn from a bag of negative film salvaged from a recycling plant on the outskirts of Beijing in 2010. The bag contained an archive of over 15,000 scratched black and white negatives, shot at one of the city's detention centers between 1991 and 1993.
17 18 19
Thomas Sauvin kept the negatives presented in this series un-scanned for almost a decade. Even though the artist was intrigued by the content, the risk of scanning official Chinese disposed material could put in jeopardy the (by then) starting Silvermine Project. For this reason, this material was always edited by the artist in its raw negative form. Kept in such a way in the presented book.
‘17 18 19’ is an investigative journey on the practice of those police department photographers and their aesthetic, practice and understanding of photography, composition and art direction.
Who are those people? What are the stories behind each item? Why 17 18 19? Are questions that the reader has to solve. As if the book is a piece of evidence itself. Putting the reader in the investigator’s shoes.
“The visual and social sensitivity of the author offers remarkable, poetically presented testament of human destinies, archival significance and social contemplation.”
Prof. Slobodan Dan Peich, Comparative Cultural Studies, History of Art and Ideas
This is how Thomas Sauvin signs the books — Signed on the right, unsigned on the left.
The Book
‘17 18 19’ was created in a collaboration between Thomas Sauvin and Void. During the artist’s stay in Convento Residency (Portugal) – in September ‘19 – the book was edited, designed and ready to be printed. Which happened just a month later.
It is gorgeously printed with metallic silver ink on black paper. And it wasn’t a random aesthetic decision. The black pages allow the photographs to be printed in negative form. And the metallic silver ink ties ‘17 18 19’ to its genesis: the Silvermine Project. The silver and the negatives, once disposed in China, are now recycled into a book form.
The Collector’s Edition
Limited Edition of 50
17 18 19
15 x 20,5 cm
224 pages
Edition of 750 copies
Hardcover
Printed with silver ink on black paper
Text by Holly Roussell, in English & Chinese
ISBN 978-618-84341-4-1
Collector’s Edition
Limited edition of 50 copies
Comes with an original negative from the ‘17 18 19’ series
Numbered and signed by the artist
+ the signed standard edition of ‘17 18 19’
Thomas Sauvin
Since 2009, the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin has embarked on an unusual adventure: salvaging discarded negatives from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing that were destined to destruction. Undertaking one of the largest and most important archival projects in China, he buys by the kilo, taking away rice bags filled with thousands or rolls of slobbery, dusty and scratched negative film. Once closely examined, images are consistently selected, digitized, and classified. Today it encompasses over half a million of anonymous photographs spanning the period from 1985 to 2005, reconstructing then a large part of the history of popular analogue photography in China. This coherent and unceasingly evolving archive allows us to apprehend negatives in different ways. It constitutes a visual platform for cross-cultural interactions, while impacting on our collective memory of the recent past.
Featured in
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✳︎ Shortlist — Best Photobook 2020 — PhotoEspaña
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CANADA, Library of the University of British Columbia
ENGLAND, Picnic
GERMANY, The Photobook Museum
GREECE, Med Photo Fest
GREECE, National Library of Greece
GREECE, Void
IRELAND, The Library Project
LATVIA, ISSP
PORTUGAL, Narrativa
ROMANIA, Photo Romania Festival at Grain Lab
SPAIN, Biblioteca de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid
SWEDEN, Hasselblad Center
SWEDEN, Libris
SWITZERLAND, De Pietri Artphilein Foundation
USA, Bethel University Library
USA, Columbia University in the City of New York
USA, Florida International University
USA, Getty Research Institute
USA, Metropolitan Museum of Art
USA, MoMA Library
USA, New York Public Library, The
USA, Princeton University Library
USA, Stanford University Libraries
USA, Tufst University (Tisch Library)
USA, UNC Charlotte (J. Murrey Atkins Library)
USA, University of Alabama
USA, University of Iowa Libraries
USA, University of Minnesota Batchload
USA, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
USA, University of North Dakota
USA, University of Pennsylvania Libraries
USA, University of Pittsburgh
USA, Yale University Library
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Photograph: Thomas Sauvin
Text: Holly Russell
Design: João Linneu
Edit: João Linneu, Thomas Sauvin
Printing: MAS Matbaa
Binding: MAS Matbaa
Language: Chinese, English
Font: Neue Haas Grotesk by Monotype
Thomas Sauvin © for the photographs
Holly Russell © for the text
Void © for this edition