Compagnons

Photographs by Charlotte Dumas

2 exhibitions on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Royal Canin
With the support of the city of Arles
FLAIR Galerie from September 19 to November 24, 2018
Railings of the Jardin d'été, Arles from September 19 to October 3, 2018
Pluto, Rapallo. 2010 - Charlotte Dumas - FLAIR Galerie

Pluto, Rapallo. 2010
Photograph by Charlotte Dumas
C-Print
29,52 x 39,37 inches
© Charlotte Dumas / Courtesy andriesse eyck galerie, Amsterdam

Royal Canin, in order to celebrate its 50th anniversary, pays tribute to the relationship of men and dogs, heroes of our daily life, with Compagnons, two photo exhibitions by Charlotte Dumas, a Dutch artist forever passionate in her observation of the link between man and animal.

FLAIR Galerie presents, from September 19 to November 24, 2018, a selection of photographs taken between 2009 and 2011, as well as some pictures taken from a work created this year for Royal Canin. These latter are exhibited from September 19 to October 3, 2018, on the railings of the Jardin d’Été, boulevard des Lices. Visitors will discover portraits of dogs and cats, companions of everyday in the service of humanity.

On this occasion, a book is published by Éditions Glénat.

To photograph is to go to meet the other, often say photographers. With Charlotte Dumas, this time-honoured formula takes a particular meaning since her models are not humans but animals.

However, in 2011, when she made the portrait of the dogs involved in the rescue of survivors of the September-11 wreckage in New York and in the Pentagon, she decided to interact with them on an equal footing. She first wanted to know them better, the way documentarians interview their models before taking a single photography. Her goal? To discover what they had become ten years later, struck as she had been by their bravery — “Photos of these dogs published in magazines in 2001 were seared in my memory” — and to capture their character, their soul, in order to highlight their personality. By doing so, Charlotte Dumas stays clear of any unnecessary staging or decorum. She went on photographing them in the homes of their masters, scattered all over United States, in their daily life. With a kind of natural simplicity that contributed to humanize them. Guinness, Bretagne or Orion II face the camera, stare into the lens, moving and dignified at the same…

Whether it is for her personal work or for an assignment, such as provided by Royal Canin this year, Charlotte Dumas does not pick her models coincidentally. Those are “working” dogs, serving firemen or blind persons. More than companions, here they are, heroes of the day!

Sophie Bernard, July 2018

Translated by Pierre Gugliemina

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