Figure 1 – IPhone portrait of Steve. (c) DE Wolf 2016

My calendar is telling me that today is December 22, which is the usual day for launching my favorite photographs of the year series; so that I end on New Year’s Eve. At least it reminds me that I really should be blogging. All the impending doom and gloom in the news encourages me to something lighter, and so I thought that I would feature instead, in the waning days of the year. some of my “Animal Faces” series. I have reptiles, canines. felines, and ruminates. But as a first entry here, I thought I would offer up the photograph that started it all “Steve.”

Now Steve is a very wrinkle-face bull mastiff that belongs to a friend. He epitomizes the point to the “Animal Faces” Project. Cicero (106-43 B.C.) is credited with saying that “Ut imago est animi voltus sic indices oculi‘ (The face is a picture of the mind as the eyes are its interpreter), or in its more common form, “The eyes are the window of the soul.”

You must wonder what Steve is thinking, or more significantly feeling. Common cartoons would put a bubble above Steve’s head with the words “Woof, woof, woof). However, dogs are not vacant headed, nor are they single-minded, laser focused on food. I have read several theories of the origin of dogs, more importantly of the human-dog relationship. Dogs feel, love, and crave affection. To some extent they remember the past and anticipate the future.They are absolute in their devotion. Clearly they see us as some odd two-legged member of the pack that is somewhat lacking in the canine social graces.

This point was made by John Steinbeck in the Grapes of Wrath,