Beijing Silvermine - Archive no. E-0414-11

C-print

Paper size 8x10" (aprox. 20x25cm)

Image size 18 x 23 cm

Edition of 100

Comes with a signed and numbered certificate sticker 

Image from the Beijing Silvermine project, an archive of a million negatives salvaged over the last 14 years from a recycling plant in Beijing

Since 2009, the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin has salvaged discarded negatives from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing, negatives that were destined to destruction. His Beijing Silvermine archive, one of the largest archival projects in China, now encompasses over 850000 anonymous photographs spanning the period from 1985 to 2005, thus allowing the reconstruction of a large part of the history of popular analogue photography in the country. This unceasingly evolving archive provides a visual platform for cross-cultural interactions, while impacting on our collective memory of the recent past.