Charlotte Dumas: Anima features a series of portraits of the majestic burial horses of Arlington National Cemetery. The exhibition is on view at the Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh from Aug. 8 to Oct. 4, 2014 with an opening reception on Friday, August 8 from 6:00 - 8:00 pm.

These intensely personal and up-close portraits of draft horses that serve the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment, the Army's oldest active infantry regiment known as "The Old Guard," reveal a powerful human connection to these honored animals. Using only the natural light that reaches into the stalls, photographer Charlotte Dumas captures the horses as they relax and move towards sleep after a day of work.

"The bond between mankind and animals, and the extensive history that it accompanies, is my greatest interest," says Dumas. Using her standard 80mm lens on medium format film, she seeks to express how humans "use and regard animals for our own purposes, literally and symbolically." Dumas travels the world making evocative formal portraits of animals, not just horses, characterizing them by their utility, social function, or by the way they relate to people. Her goal is to engender a visual relationship, so that the portrait makes us more conscious of how we look at animals in our everyday lives.

Anima was photographed in 2012 on two separate visits to Washington, D.C. The exhibition is comprised of several grand and impressive images, as well as a poignant video work portraying the animals as they drift in and out of sleep. Five additional works from Dumas' past projects accompany the exhibition.

Anima is organized by Julie Saul Gallery, New York, and Silver Eye, and was commissioned by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Charlotte Dumas (Dutch, b. 1977) explored this world of animal photography in her first two projects: Four Horses (2002) centered around four working police horses in Rotterdam, while Day is Done (2004) focused on the horses from the Carabinieri a cavallo (mounted police) in Rome. From there, Dumas worked with a number of animals around the world, from wolves in Norway and Sweden (Reverie, 2005), to tigers confined within zoos, parks, and sanctuaries in Indiana and Texas (Tiger, Tiger, 2007), to stray dogs who lived amongst the chaotic urban environments of Palermo, Italy and New York City (Heart-Shaped Hole, 2008 and Heart of a Dog, 2009).

Prior to Anima (2012), Dumas set out to photograph the remaining search and rescue dogs deployed by FEMA to the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon for her project Retrieved, 2011. With the help of FEMA, Dumas was able to photograph each of the dogs in their homes across the United States, where they still live with their handlers 10 years after the attacks.

Dumas attended the Rietveld Academie Amsterdam from 1996-2000 and later studied as a resident at the Rijksacademy for visual Arts in Amsterdam from 2001-2002. Dumas has shown her work internationally, including the Julie Saul Gallery, New York City; Galeri Paul Andriesse, Amsterdam; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Schunk Cultural Instituet Heerlen, Netherlands; Rapallo Fotografia Conteporanea, Rapallo, Italy; Silas Marder Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY; and Lawrence Markey Gallery, San Antonio, TX, amongst others. Her work is also included in a number of international collections, including the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands; Dordrechts museum, Netherlands; the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Netherlands; Huis Marseille, Foundation for Photography, Amsterdam; and the New York Public Library. Dumas has a number of publications, including The Widest Prairies (2013); Companion (2012); Anima (2012); Retrieved (2011); Al Lavaro! (2011); Repose (2010); and Paradis (2009), amongst others.