FACES OF THE PAST
French artist’s film digitization project shows how China has changed
At first glance, piles of dank discarded film negatives in recycling centers may appear to be nothing but trash, but when you collect half a million negatives you are sure to find something worth saving – as French artist and photo collector Thomas Sauvin has proved through his nine-year artistic project.
Named Beijing Silvermine, the project is an archive of half a million negatives salvaged over the last nine years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing.
The project has nearly 76,000 followers on Instagram and has stirred quite a buzz on Sina Weibo. The photos record the daily lives of people in China and changes in society from 1985 to 2005, a time before the rise of digital cameras when rolls of film were still popular.
Sauvin has had a strong interest in Chinese culture since he was young. This motivated him to learn the language and eventually settle in Beijing. His strong interest in old photos and desire to get a deeper understanding of the city and its people also inspired Sauvin to start collecting unwanted negatives from a recycling center worker in Beijing in 2009.
“At the very beginning, I just picked out those unexpected pictures that surprised me, but over the years as the number of pictures reached a quarter of a million, some particular themes revealed themselves,” Sauvin told the Global Times.
According to the artist, babies and children, people posing with electrical household appliances in their homes and people going to the beach are among the commonly seen themes. The more pictures he saw, the more he came to understand the development of what is now the world’s second largest economy.
“The two decades from 1985 to 2005 is a historic period during which the entire country grew fast after the opening-up and reform policy of 1978. This is vividly reflected in these photos,” he noted.
Instead of thinking of it as a collection of random old pictures, Sauvin regards the archive as a visual history book. For example, photos of people standing besides TV sets, refrigerators and computers during the 1980s show how people’s standard of living was improving. The influence of Western culture and lifestyles is also captured in photos of people standing besides posters of Western celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe.
“The first McDonald’s came to China in the 1990s and you can see people taking photos with the statue of Ronald McDonald outside the store at the time,” Sauvin said, emphasizing that the photos tell the story of Chinese people integrating with the outside world.
Another interesting discovery that Sauvin made had to do with the negatives themselves. For example, he noticed that the 36 pictures on rolls of film dating from the 1980s often spanned a period of around four years. This showed that people used their cameras very frugally and only took pictures when something really important happened since film was rather expensive during that time. However, 10 years later a single roll of film could contain pictures from a single family trip, say a short journey to the Summer Palace in Beijing, which shows how the quality of life in China was improving.
Apart from historical value, the photos also remind viewers of folkcustoms and happy times in the past.
For example, “lighting up cigarettes” was once a popular tradition at weddings during the 1990s. For the tradition, several cigarettes would be placed butt-first in holes cut in an empty plastic bottle. The bride would light these cigarettes and the groom would then “smoke” all the cigarettes at once by sucking on the mouth of the bottle.
Pictures of newlywed couples carrying out this tradition have caused bursts of laughter among today’s generation and ignited the happy memories of people who lived through those times.
Violation of privacy?
Despite the wide popularity of Sauvin’s project, some netizens argue that the exposure of such photos breaches the privacy of people who may have no idea that their lives are being put on public display. However, Sauvin and some of the actual owners of the photos think differently.
“The key point is that the way I deal with these photos is respectful,” said Sauvin.
In his collection, each person only appears once and no extra details are revealed that may expose their identity. Sauvin also stressed that the pictures are catalogued and shown according to different themes that can best reflect the typical features of the changing times.
Moreover, some people have actually been pleasantly surprised after coming across their own family members in Sauvin’s pictures.
According to Sauvin, there are three people so far who have found family photos and that number is likely to increase as the project grows in popularity.
“They have contacted me and expressed their gratitude for bringing their precious memories back,” said Sauvin, who returned the film negatives to the family members.
Exhibitions for Sauvin’s project have been held in more than 15 countries and regions around the world. Currently, a new exhibition is being held in France.