Thomas Sauvin: Great Leaps Forward

Great Leaps Forward presents a remarkable photographic archive discovered by collector and artist Thomas Sauvin in a Beijing flea market in 2016. Inside a tightly knotted plastic bag were more than 300 photographs taken by an anonymous photographer associated with the Xi’an Physical Education University’s photography department.

All the images were made on a single bright day in June 1960 and depict athletes captured mid-motion on a sports field, often suspended in moments that seem to defy gravity. Beyond their striking visual rhythm, the photographs carry a deeper historical resonance. They are among the very few photographic records Sauvin has encountered from the period of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), a turbulent campaign of rapid industrialization that led to one of the most devastating famines in modern history.

Through this posthumous collaboration with an unknown photographer, Great Leaps Forward reveals a poetic and unexpected visual record from the margins of a momentous historical period, where athletic movement and political history intersect in a strangely suspended choreography.

Published by Silvermine
2019
Paris
Edition of 750
Hardcover
17 × 33 cm
128 pages

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