(Signed) Great Leaps Forward by Thomas Sauvin

A collection of works by Thomas Sauvin, a French collector and artist living in Beijing.

In 2016, Sauvin purchased a pile of photographs stuffed inside a plastic bag at a flea market in Beijing and, upon opening it, found over 300 images taken by an anonymous member of the photography department at Xi'an Sport University.
These photos capture the athletes on a sunny day in 1960. Although Sauvin has collected a huge number of photographs to date, this was the first time he had come across photographs taken between 1958 and 1962. At the time, China was undergoing the Great Leap Forward, a chaotic industrialization policy aimed at moving China away from its agricultural economy and towards a new communist system based on industry and large-scale agricultural production. This policy ultimately led to the worst famine in human history. Given this social background, surviving photographs from this period are extremely valuable.
These surreal photographs surprisingly do not reflect the most noteworthy aspects of society at the time (although one could say that, paradoxically, they do). This collection of works reminds us that the purpose of Sauvin's work is to revive the perspective of individuals that is not consolidated into a grand view of history.

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Title: Great Leaps Forward
Artist: Thomas Sauvin
Silvermine, 2019
Soft cover in slipcase
170 x 330 mm, 128 pages
Text in English and Chinese
First edition of 750 copies, signed
￥8,800 + tax