Thomas Sauvin’s Beijing Silvermine Project
A portrait of an era through its discarded film negatives
Thomas Sauvin’s Beijing Silvermine Project begins in an illegal recycling site outside of Beijing. An abject scene: in a room piled high with trash, in a warehouse somewhere in the dump, Sauvin sifts. The trash he is looking through is a curated discard that contains trace or significant amounts of silver nitrate. Such as film negatives. A furtive man w…