Beijing Silvermine: Thomas Sauvin's Vernacular Photo Archive at Fotografiska Shanghai

French artist Thomas Sauvin's Beijing Silvermine archive, comprising over a million negatives salvaged from a recycling plant, is the subject of its first complete retrospective at Fotografiska Shanghai this summer. Sauvin lived in Beijing from 2002 to 2015 and began buying negatives by the kilo after discovering a ragpicker collecting them door-to-door. The negatives span 1985 to 2005, capturing everyday life during China's reform era. For the exhibition, Sauvin and curator Holly Roussell printed thousands of images at four-by-six inches with rounded edges, arranged randomly on the wall like a scrapbook. The show includes replicas of Sauvin's studio drawers and physical mementoes. The archive has previously spawned photobooks such as 2015's "Until Death Do Us Part" (shaped like a cigarette packet), animations with Chinese artist Lei Lei, collages with Japanese artist Kensuke Koike, and textual juxtapositions with German duo Klara Källström and Thobias Fäldt. The photographs document consumerism—McDonald's, Sprite, tractors, TVs—and travel to the Egyptian Pyramids and Buddha statues. Rather than emphasizing individual genius, the archive reveals collective folklore through repetition. The first McDonald's in Beijing opened in April 1992 in Wangfujing, with 700 seats, serving 40,000 customers on its first day.