Date: Thu, Apr 8, 1999, 12:53 PM

Dear Pedro,

Your editorial, "Eye" examines not only the significance of self-portraits, but suggests that if, as the cliche goes, "the eyes are mirrors of the soul," without the catch lights in your eye, your self-portrait would not be as viable.

Most revealing about those catch lights is that photographers can look at others' work and see how it is lit. How very conscious the industry is of this--so much as to offer reflectors shaped to give specific options for the catch lights. In covers for Vogue, Glamour, etc. models' eyes, we can see the light banks very clearly. In Matthew Rolston's shot for Epson's Photo EX Color Ink Jet Printer color printers, the catch lights--facilitated by sunglasses--are so distinct that they reflect a vertical image of Rolston himself, making the exposure, and the light he is standing before. What's even odder is that Rolston is a human scrim, thereby integrating himself with the shot both technically and figuratively.

Jerry Uelsmann once said "Photography will always have elements of alchemy" (my favorite Uelsmann quote), and your Eye essay intensifies this observation. With your digital photo, as Rolston's, the fact that technology is turning things up a bit--or byte--does not exclude, but invites all the more--the human eye. Cearly, there is no substitute, no matter how mysteriously it works on the brain: our computer, as you say.

The lottery idea for group show announcement images is a great one!

Ivy