Silas Amos Fantasy Portrait - Yves de Contades

Silas Amos, CD, JKR:
I‘ve long admired Gered Mankowitz’s portrait of Marianne Faithful (taken in the equally beautiful Salisbury Pub) for obvious reasons - but also because I love the guy in the mirror, caught staring for all eternity. As a camera-shy wallflower, I thought paying homage to this great original would mean I could bask in some reflected glamour, and would happily pass an hour at the bar. It did.
(with thanks to the Salisbury pub and M and P models)
Dr Cecilia d'Felice's psychological interpretation:
This portrait is both sensually evocative and sexually aware. At its heart lies ambiguity. Are we supposed to look at the beautiful woman, the luscious interior or the man in the mirror?
When we notice the man in the mirror we are aroused. More aroused perhaps, than by the open sexuality of the woman. Who is this man at once hidden and then hiding? What is he doing there? Is he passing through, in shot by some quirky accident of time and place? Or is he a voyeur, admiring from a distance, not involved but involving? Does the woman ‘belong’ to him? Is he sharing her with us for our pleasure, or for his?
The subtle play of ambiguities and Silas Amos’ explicit ambivalence, generates a profound exploration of subject and object, private and public, of confusion of identity and a sense of disturbance, of provocation. Of being drawn in to a psychodrama without understanding what the rules, if any, are. A highly complex and nuanced portrait that raises more questions than it answers.