Charlotte Dumas | Retrieved

Charlotte Dumas | Retrieved

For more than twenty years, Dutch artist Charlotte Dumas has explored “the bond between mankind and animals, and the extensive history that accompanies it.” Working primarily in photography and video, she is drawn to animals shaped by human care, training, and expectation, creating portraits that resist easy sentimentality and invite reflection on our relationships with them. This longstanding interest led Dumas to search and rescue dogs that served in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when FEMA deployed approximately three hundred SAR dogs and their handlers to support recovery efforts at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Ten years later, Dumas located and photographed fifteen of the surviving dogs at their homes across the United States, using natural light to reveal both their enduring heroism and the vulnerability that accompanies aging. Her portraits offer a quiet meditation on loyalty, service, and the passage of time, honoring these animals as active and meaningful participants in a pivotal moment in modern history.

[image]
Merlyn, age 14, Otis, CO [detail]  2011 
Charlotte Dumas (b. 1977) 
archival pigment print  
Courtesy of the artist and andriesse eyck galerie, Amsterdam
R2026.1601.001