Charlotte Dumas | Retrieved
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Charlotte Dumas | Retrieved
In 2011, Charlotte Dumas traveled across the United States to create intimate portraits of aging search and rescue dogs that had worked at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon after September 11, 2001, honoring the crucial role these canine teams played in the response efforts.
SAN FRANCISCO 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.
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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Charlotte Dumas | Retrieved is located post-security in Harvey Milk Terminal 1 of the San Francisco International Airport. This exhibition is accessible from July 31, 2026 to March 7, 2027 to ticketed passengers, and through prior arrangement by emailing curator@flysfo.com. There is no charge to view the exhibition.
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