Charlotte Dumas: Retrieved

Harvey Milk Terminal 1

Departures Level 2, Gallery 1G - Post-Security

Jul 31, 2026 - Mar 07, 2027

Charlotte Dumas | Retrieved

For more than twenty years, Dutch artist Charlotte Dumas has explored what she describes as “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: horses, wolves, elephants, and others whose roles carry cultural and historical weight. Approaching her subjects often at eye level and with reverential patience, she creates portraits that resist easy sentimentality, instead suggesting these animals’ complex inner lives and inviting reflection on our relationships with them. This longstanding interest led Dumas to a group of search and rescue (SAR) dogs that served in the aftermath of September 11, 2001.

In the days after 9/11, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) deployed approximately three hundred SAR dogs and their handlers to support recovery efforts. The deployment marked one of the largest mobilizations of SAR dogs in U.S. history, with twenty-six of FEMA’s twenty-eight Urban Search & Rescue task forces called into service. These canine teams worked around the clock alongside firefighters and other first responders at the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. SAR dogs are trained to operate in chaotic environments, maintaining focus despite noise, towering equipment, and other distractions. A dog’s innate sense of smell—supported by up to three hundred million olfactory receptors, compared to about six million in human nasal cavities—is central to this work. Handlers, often professionals in law enforcement, fire services, and emergency response, undergo rigorous training in close partnership with their dogs, preparing for deployment at a moment’s notice.

Ten years later, in 2011, Dumas set out to locate and photograph the dogs who had taken part in that mission. With FEMA’s assistance, she found fifteen of the surviving dogs, visiting them at their homes across the United States. Dumas emphasized each dog’s nobility, using natural light to reveal both their enduring heroism and the vulnerability that accompanies aging. Her portraits of these retired dogs offer a quiet meditation on loyalty, service, and the passage of time, honoring not only the work they performed and the comfort they provided, but also the dignity of their later years. Through her quiet tribute, Dumas invites viewers to recognize these animals not only as working partners, but as active and meaningful participants in a pivotal moment in modern history.

Charlotte Dumas (Dutch, b. 1977) studied photography at both the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Rijksakademie for Visual Arts in Amsterdam. She has held solo exhibitions at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; De Pont Museum, Tilburg, The Netherlands; The Photographers’ Gallery, London; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA; and Hermès Maison Ginza Le Forum, Tokyo, among others. Dumas has published over twenty books of her work, including Retrieved, published by The Ice Plant in 2011, and most recently, Entendue, published by Fw:Books in 2025. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

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[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

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