Adam Fieled (editor, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania): "Versailles"
Kids we were, moving about in worlds not realized, yet
the big, enfranchised Montreal portrait of Mary demonstrates
just how self-conscious she was about images and imagery.
When I snapped the portrait, in the middle of what became
our Montreal routine, she was as completely in control,
completely in command as she could possibly be. I would
never have guessed— I now imagine the night we arrived
in the room on Saint Catherine Street, Mary’s first look around
was where to stand when pictures, portraits could be taken.
This, on a more than semi-conscious level, was her way of
making up to me that the big push towards enfranchisement
would have to be mine. There, in the architectural niche to
the left or the right of the large rectangular (oblong) window-case—
there, vacillating between escape from the pursuit of the male gaze
and defiant (as in her adolescence) confrontation— were she to
make her stand there, adding the contemporary touch of the jade
pendant (looping in the fashionistas), the chiaroscuro of who she
could or could not be in the world would be an unambiguous study
in pristine ambiguities. That calculatedness, on this particular level,
was invisible to me then, as was Mary’s tacit acknowledgement to
herself that the long, slow haul would have to be me alone. She
evened the score for herself by doing extra work, which subliminally
made it that our time in Montreal was a working vacation for her.
All that calculatedness also meant that her voice could never stop
ringing in my ears. We would be working together for the rest of
my life, no matter what. The room on Saint Catherine Street not
any more cheerful than anything else, but cheerful for her when
she knew, as I did not, how the portrait would look. Versailles, at least.
© Adam Fieled 2026
the big, enfranchised Montreal portrait of Mary demonstrates
just how self-conscious she was about images and imagery.
When I snapped the portrait, in the middle of what became
our Montreal routine, she was as completely in control,
completely in command as she could possibly be. I would
never have guessed— I now imagine the night we arrived
in the room on Saint Catherine Street, Mary’s first look around
was where to stand when pictures, portraits could be taken.
This, on a more than semi-conscious level, was her way of
making up to me that the big push towards enfranchisement
would have to be mine. There, in the architectural niche to
the left or the right of the large rectangular (oblong) window-case—
there, vacillating between escape from the pursuit of the male gaze
and defiant (as in her adolescence) confrontation— were she to
make her stand there, adding the contemporary touch of the jade
pendant (looping in the fashionistas), the chiaroscuro of who she
could or could not be in the world would be an unambiguous study
in pristine ambiguities. That calculatedness, on this particular level,
was invisible to me then, as was Mary’s tacit acknowledgement to
herself that the long, slow haul would have to be me alone. She
evened the score for herself by doing extra work, which subliminally
made it that our time in Montreal was a working vacation for her.
All that calculatedness also meant that her voice could never stop
ringing in my ears. We would be working together for the rest of
my life, no matter what. The room on Saint Catherine Street not
any more cheerful than anything else, but cheerful for her when
she knew, as I did not, how the portrait would look. Versailles, at least.
© Adam Fieled 2026
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