RETINAS is a remarkable book of photographs of the fundus oculi, the “back of the eye,” by Héctor Méndez Caratini. It is representative of his extraordinary four-decades-plus career as an ophthalmic photographer, and it offers unusual views of singular eye diseases not often seen in medical practices. The book also illustrates, for the first time, Méndez Caratini’s recent innovative work using Decorrelation Stretch technology.

Héctor Méndez Caratini worked in the 1970s and 1980s as an ophthalmic photographer for the Diabetic Retinopathy Study and the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study, the largest-ever randomized multi-center clinical studies, both sponsored by the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He has worked with the University of Puerto Rico School of Medicine and the Joslin Diabetes Center, academically affiliated with Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Currently, Méndez Caratini works with the Veterans Administration Caribbean Health Care System, as well as with several private retinal practices in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is one of only some 550 photographers in the United States credentialed as a Certified Retinal Angiographer by the Ophthalmic Photographers’ Society.

This publication includes 154 remarkable fundus photographs taken by the author, along with a conversation between photography curator Ricardo Viera and Méndez Caratini. This interview offers a rare view into the photographer’s creative and scientific processes and how his documentations of his world travels have been influenced by the new technologies associated with his ophthalmic work. It also includes an insightful essay by Méndez Caratini on his personal humanistic philosophy.