Beneath the Bite, Silence
Before the birds awaken, before colour returns to stone, two figures remain locked in their vow. The monkey warrior’s bite is not a wound but a ritual. It carves silence into the flesh of myth, and I watch, unmoving, as the gallery listens back.
Pre-dawn temple hush—
fang, flesh, and prayer interlock;
devotion exhales.
Also in Library
What the World Remembers
July moved through walls, bodies, songs, scars, cups, pages and stones—ordinary and mythic things that remember what human beings forget. Across Angkor, the Odyssey, Tolkien, Vedic creation, Greek war and quiet domestic rooms, the Library returned to one governing question: when memory fails, what in the world continues to know us?
The Story on the Wall
At Angkor Wat, more than fifty metres of carved sandstone hold the Battle of Lanka. Rama is present, but he must be found. This Prologue to The Story That Became Cambodia begins with the monumental certainty of the wall—and asks what the finished image cannot reveal about the Ramayana’s earlier journey into Khmer history.
The Mouth You Gave Me
A spare lyric poem from The Vow on breath, speech, gratitude, and the received body through which every answer must be formed and released.
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Devotion, Unbound
Angkor Wat Temple, Angkor, Cambodia — 2020
Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print
Edition
Strictly limited to 7 prints + 2 Artist’s Proofs
Edition Number
This listing is for the first numbered print from the Large Collector Edition: 1/7
Medium
Hand-toned black-and-white archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Bamboo — a museum-grade fine art paper chosen for its quiet tactility and reverent depth, echoing the spirit of the temples.
Signature & Numbering
Each print is individually signed and numbered by the artist on the border (recto)
Certificate of Authenticity
Accompanies every print
Image Size
28 x 28 inches (71.1 x 71.1 cm)
Before the birds herald day, a dusky hush clings to Angkor Wat’s Western Gallery. Within that hush, two figures ignite—a vanara’s jaws closing upon a rakshasa’s thigh, their limbs blazing across the centuries in unwavering purpose. The wall itself seems to inhale, holding the precise moment when loyalty surpasses fear.
This stillness hums with unseen currents: sandalwood breeze, latent thunder, the breath of hundreds of stone warriors who bear silent witness. Yet all sound recedes into the gravity of this single bite, chiselled conviction etched into sandstone and darkness alike.
Lucas Varro knelt for this encounter as one might kneel at a shrine: heart quiet, shutter poised, body stilled to receive what the wall would disclose. Medium-format black-and-white film gathered the lingering night; long exposure let devotion root itself in silver. Later, chiaroscuro shaping and hand-toning coaxed hidden embers to the surface, until violence revealed its secret tenderness.
Strictly limited to twenty-five prints with two Artist’s Proofs, each sheet rests on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper whose warm fibers cradle the image like well-worn prayer beads. Signed, numbered, and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, every impression bears the trace of the artist’s steady hand.
Invite this fierce serenity into the room where your quietest questions wait.
To walk further into the silence behind the stone, click here to enter the Artist’s Journal.
Previously titled ‘Battle of Lanka I, Study I, Angkor Wat Temple, Cambodia. 2020,’ this photograph has been renamed to better reflect its place in the series and its spiritual tone. The edition, provenance, and authenticity remain unchanged.