Figure 1 – Animal faces # 11 “Mophie,” Weston, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2018

I went this past Sunday with my son and his dog to Cat Rock Park in Weston, MA. The trail ends at a waterfall, and all the dogs head for the water. We ran into this fine fellow, still somewhat happily soggy from his adventures.It has been said that “the eyes are the window to the soul.” If this is true then is this fellow, whose name by the way is “Mophie,” lacking, or is it just that you have to dig deep to find his eyes. He was certainly as sweet as the soggy face suggests.

I looked briefly into the question of who first said that “the eyes are the window to the soul. Without getting too deeply into it. The Roman philosopher Cicero (106 BCE – 43 BCE) is credited with the remark,  “The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter.” In  Matthew 6: 22-23 we have that, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

I first encountered the phrase many years ago in art class in a discussion of ancient Egyptian art. Any connection between a hot Sunday in Massachusetts and art class so many years ago would seem to be purely coincidental. But this photograph is the eleventh in my series of “Animal Faces,” and, really, it is the very question that I set out to raise with the series: what goes on in the mind of these animals and how does it relate to us. And against these questions it would seem that Cicero echos my meaning best.

Canon T2i with EF70-200mm f/4L USM lens at 140 mm , ISO 1600, Aperture Priority AE Mode 1/250th sec at f/7.1 with -1 exposure compensation.