On Saturday, July 14, the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design will open Anima: Charlotte Dumas, the first one-person museum exhibition in the United States by Dutch artist Charlotte Dumas. 

Dumas travels the world making evocative, formal photographic portraits of animals. She typically works in series, portraying animals characterized by their utility, social function, or the way they relate to people. A rising international contemporary artist, Dumas recently received widespread acclaim for her photographs of the surviving search and recovery dogs of 9/11. At the Corcoran, Anima will feature a newly commissioned series of portraits centered on the majestic burial horses of Arlington National Cemetery. These Army horses, which belong to the Old Guard—the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment—carry soldiers to their final resting place in traditional military funerals. The exhibition also includes three earlier bodies of work that explore the inner lives of animals: gray wolves living in nature preserves; racehorses tethered in their stables; and stray dogs surviving on the streets of Palermo.

Drawing inspiration from classical portrait painting of the Dutch 17th-century Golden Age, Dumas uses her camera to provoke a relationship between her subjects and the viewer, engendering a greater consciousness of how we experience animals in our everyday lives.