Inside the Beijing Silvermine: A unique archive of everyday China captured through discarded photography

There’s a gentle, honest quality to the images in the Beijing Silvermine. Taken using point-and-shoot cameras, they capture a fresh perspective of China’s rapid integration with the West in its infancy. The collection includes over one million images collected from negatives Thomas Sauvin acquired from a seller who otherwise recycled film to recover silver nitrate. “The film is treated like trash there,” he says, describing the recycling zone he visits to purchase the film before lugging the negatives back to his studio for processing.

For Thomas, the inspiration in his practice comes from quantity not quality – working with a mass of material that becomes something new in its totality. The archive represents over a decades-worth of work, spent collating the photographs of unknown people, and lovingly restoring them. By making a selection of images available together for the first time using Dropbox, Thomas and It’s Nice That have explored how organising such a collection can become a creative opportunity in itself.

Thomas’ interest in found photography began during his time working as a curator for the Archive of Modern Conflict. In this role, he was dealing exclusively with singular images – his day-to-day prior to the Beijing Silvermine was wholly dedicated to sourcing and acquiring pieces for exhibitions. Throughout that process, Thomas describes a change in his relationship with the images: “It became more complicated. When I saw a photograph, my first thought wasn’t just the work on its face value. I had to think about acquisition and finding the right people to talk to about the work.”

This pushed him to explore new ways to interact with photography. “Flea markets were a good place to do that,” he says, emphasising the unassuming character of the found photography sold there. Referencing photographer Martin Parr and artist-curator Erik Kessels as inspirations, Thomas describes developing a fascination with the practice of “building [something] out of anonymous photography". Gradually, he transitioned from spending weeks acquiring a single image in his previous role, to an entirely different approach. He began to build the Beijing Silvermine collection, purchasing negatives for roughly four U.S. dollars per pound from the silver nitrate recycling zone.

Photography was a means of celebration in 80s and 90s China — a period in recent history when point-and-shoot cameras first became widely available. This is obvious enough just looking at the photographs. Put simply, subjects of photographs in the Beijing Silvermine know they’re having their photo taken. Think big smiles and eye contact, while bodies are positioned front on, facing the lens. Subjects hold a performative character that acknowledges the presence of the camera, posing in a manner that reflects what we understand photographs like these should look like. Picture your family albums. Chances are, you’re also smiling aggressively at the camera – maybe even standing in front of a historical landmark.

Perhaps this explains why there’s something universal at play in these photographs. The family album is a language we all recognise. The Beijing Silvermine images are historically significant not because of the informational value each photograph brings, but rather the familiarity that they evoke when exhibited together. Be it the classic birthday cake photo or the same vacation contrapposto stance with one hand resting on a monument, the structure of each image presents itself as a small piece of a shared consciousness. They find weight in quantity rather than quality.

Taken by thousands of different people, the Silvermine images ultimately collapse into the same perspective. When displayed in bulk, the intimate moments transform into different views of the same experience: the birthday pictures are no longer mere celebrations of individual birthdays but, instead, become a collective visualisation of birthday experiences in China during this period.. “At some point [the images] feel like the eye of the same photographer,” as Thomas describes.

“You switch from personal memory to collective memory. I’m really fascinated by this dynamic,” he continues. Despite being such intimate and personal glimpses into the lives of others, the Beijing Silvermine maintains a distance between the viewer and the subject through each subject’s anonymity. This redirects the viewer’s attention from the personal history of the subject to the broader event that the image communicates. “What you’re seeing are not personal family photos anymore. That’s not the focus, you’re not wondering about the identity of the person… you’re looking at something else.”

Through sheer quantity, found photography takes on a life of its own. Rather than entering a curatorial process with intention, the selection and arrangement of the Beijing Silvermine images occurs spontaneously – reflected in our curation of the archive on Dropbox. Be it an identical pose or the same landmark, the images share an indescribable connection. “Something happens when there’s a lot of them, when they’re next to each other,” Thomas says.

With a substantial following on various social media sites, Thomas can also recall a number of times where his followers have identified their relatives in the photos posted. He specifically details an image of a man lying in a mermaid pose horizontally on a rock. Being an image he particularly liked, Thomas used it as the centrepiece of many of his international exhibitions. The subject’s relative saw him on Thomas’ Weibo, reached out, and the two ended up having dinner together, during which he was able to discover the context of the photo: “It was of his visit to some sort of engineer conference in the countryside,” Thomas adds. “I travelled with him, so I kind of know him somehow.”

While fondly recalling his interactions with this man, Thomas underlines the importance of anonymity in the project and characterises each image as a piece of a larger puzzle. He cautions: “I’d go so far as to say that the subject’s experience of recognising themselves in the image brings nothing to the experience of the collection as a whole.” The line between collective and individual memory is drawn by the viewer’s relationship with the subject. When the subject is anonymous to us, we see the image for the moment it captures; when we’re conscious of the subject’s identity, we focus on their relationship to the moment.

In doing so, the Beijing Silvermine images find quality in quantity. As fragments of a larger, more universal whole, they offer inspiration from somewhere unexpected, unassuming, and joyful.

We invited artist Melissa Kitty Jarram to create a new piece inspired by the Beijing Silvermine. Take a look here, and while you’re there respond with some inspiration of your own to be in with the chance to receive Melissa’s original artwork.