In November 2014 Charlotte Dumas started a project to portray the eight native horse breeds of Japan, some so few in number that their future is uncertain; only the Dosanko of Hokkaido still thrives, while most of the others are confined to small islands and have never been able to migrate. The breeds are the Yonaguni, Miyako, Dosanko, Kiso, Tokara, Tsushima (Taishu), Misaki and Noma ponies, and in some places the horse is a symbol of its location, as on Yonaguni Island. Over two years she travelled from Yonaguni and Miyako islands and Nakanoshima in the south to Nagano, Tsushima, Cape Toi and Ehime, and to the cold north of Hokkaido, photographing with large-format film. Her aim is to present individual portraits and a collective one that open something of the history of these animals in relation to the people who share their territory, and of the role and the symbolic or practical value they have today. Each breed has its own story, landscape and spirit; as the Harper's Magazine art director Stacey Clarkson James writes, she does not use horses as props: when she looks at them, they look back.