17 18 19 - Standard Edition

by Thomas Sauvin, published by Void
The series 17 18 19 is drawn from a bag of negative film salvaged from a recycling plant on the outskirts of Beijing in 2010. The bag contained an archive of over 15,000 scratched black and white negatives, shot at one of the city’s detention centers between 1991 and 1993. Pocket knives, screwdrivers, shovels, stolen cash, clothing, jewelry and home electronics are placed before the camera ; the photographs clearly present evidence and mugshots of the accused, but they are entirely cut off from any further information. They have survived only as inverted images, trapped on film.
Presented here in their original form as negatives, the camera behaves as an X-ray machine the objects glow in a grey void, creating daunting still lifes of an unexpected kind. Unsettling and beautiful in equal measure, every item these people have left behind, whether a weapon or an object of desire, is preserved like an artifact, a fossil for our examination. The evidence if often displayed alongside a referential three-centimeter ruler where the numbers 17, 18, and 19 appear.
Albeit utilitatian in function and form, the negatives, objects of the passage of time, distance us from the unidentified hors-champ events to which they bear witness. Slowly, compassion, emerging from personal memory, can begin to replace judgment.

17 18 19系列取材于2010年从北京郊区一回收站发现的一袋底片。袋子里共一万五千多张划痕满布的黑白底片，均摄于1991年至1993年间的北京某拘留所。小刀、螺丝刀、铁锹、现金赃款、衣物、珠宝和家电均摆在相机前；显然这些照片记录的是赃物、作案工具和嫌疑人肖像，但主角完全被隔离抽绝，没有任何更多的信息。这些影像仅以倒置的形式困于底片上得以存留。
这些照片以底片的原始形式呈现。相机就像一台X光机，这些物件在灰阶中微微发亮，像是异常可怖的静物写生，令人不安又让人惊艳。每一件被遗留的物品，不管是作案武器还是贪念物欲，皆如工艺品般被保存，成为供我们今日端详检验的化石。证物照中常附有一把参考量尺，小物就放置在标有“17，18，19”的三厘米尺子旁。
这些承载了流逝时光的底片，尽管在功能和形式上具有功利性，但间隔开了我们与它们所见证的景深之外的悬疑与未知。渐渐地，恻隐之心于个人记忆中涌现，开始取代评判。

“The visual and social sensitivity of the author offers remarkable, poetically presented testament of human destinies, archival significance and social contemplation.”
“作者的视觉和社会敏感性为人类命运，档案意义和社会沉思提供了非凡诗意的证明。”
— Prof. Slobodan Dan Peich, Comparative Cultural Studies, History of Art and Ideas

Award

Nominated for the Best photobook of the year (international category), PHoto España, 2020

17 18 19 - Collector's Edition

Limited edition of 50 copies containing a standard edition with fingerprints and signature, 3 unique silver offset prints and one unique 35mm b&w negative from the archive.

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