About the French photo artist, Thomas SAUVIN

In 2009, French collector and artist Thomas SAUVIN embarked on an unusual adventure: recovering negatives from a recycling plant on the outskirts of Beijing that were destined for destruction. He undertakes one of the largest and most important archival projects in China, shopping for miles. He takes rice sacks filled with thousands or rolls of drooling, dusty, scratched negative film. After thorough examination, the images are consistently selected, digitized and classified. Today, his archive includes over half a million anonymous photographs from 1985 to 2005, reconstructing much of the history of popular analog photography in China. This coherent and constantly evolving archive allows us to capture negatives in different ways. It provides a visual platform for cross-cultural interactions while influencing our collective memory of the recent past.

Photo books by Thomas SAUVIN

'Silvermine Albums' (2013); 'Quanshen' (2013); 'METV' (2013); 'Until Death Do Us Part' (2015); 'Xian' (2016); 'No More No Less' (2018); 'Great Leaps Forward' (2019); '17 18 19' (2019); 'Talk Soon' (2021); 'On This Day' (2021, with Klara KÄLLSTRÖM & Thobias FÄLDT)


The very small photo book, 'Until death do us part', comes in an original box for cigarettes. It alludes to the role that cigarettes play in Chinese weddings: as a sign of appreciation, it is common for the bride to light a cigarette for every man invited
0,00 € *
Selected as one of the Photo-Eye Best Photobooks of 2013, this special designed selection of full-length portraits, made in Chinese photo studios between the 1930s and the 1980s, reveals fragments of the history of Chinese society and ideology.
68,00 € *
‘17 18 19’ by Thomas SAUVIN is an investigative journey on the practice of police department photographers and their understanding of photography. Who are those people? What are the stories behind? Why '17 18 19'? Questions that the reader has to solve.
from 45,00 €
The catalogue 'Photobooks. Art Page by Page' accompanies an exhibition with a selection of 45 photo books from recent decades, focusing on unusual concepts, designs & forms of presentation that reveal the potential of the photo book as an artistic medium.
48,00 € * Weight 0.3 kg
'No more no less' is an exciting photo book project. The edition by 'the (M) éditions' is very different from the results of two other publishers with identical source material, which was based on a found, illustrated manuscript on photographic portraits.
0,00 € *
This set includes all three different designs and book formats of the 'No more no less' photo book project which has been iniciated by Thomas SAUVIN and Kensuke KOIKE. The base was a found manuscript with pictures about the work with portrait photography.
298,00 € *
This photo book - as 'Jiazazhi' edition - is the result of a special editorial project. The source material, which was identical for three different publishers, was based on a found, illustrated manuscript dealing with the rules for photographic portraits
0,00 € *
A set consisting of five albums in accordion format, each with twenty small prints, lets you witness the birth of post-socialist China. The negatives (1985-2005) were originally intended for destruction in a recycling facility on the outskirts of Beijing.
450,00 € *