Beneath the Flame That Did Not Burn
Evening did not fall that day—it rose.
Along the western gate of Angkor Wat, the sky gathered itself into silence. The jungle slowed. One bird passed overhead without sound. Even the leaves turned inward. I remember standing in the path below her, this devata of flame and stillness. She is carved high into the wall, poised above the world but never apart from it. Her hand lifts a blossom that will never wither. Her eyes are quiet with knowing.
The heat was gone. The light was soft, yet sharpened. No longer sunlight—it had become memory. She did not catch it. She released it.
I did not move the tripod. I remember that. I had already composed. The film waited in its holder like breath behind the ribs. And then something changed in the stone. Not in the texture, not in the exposure. Something else. A shift beneath the carving—as though her stillness had agreed to rise.
The print I would later tone by hand in gold. Not to embellish, but to reveal what the light had given: a consecration that was never loud, never declarative. Just a flame held in stone. A silence shaped like offering.
Gold without shadow
blossoms in her lifted hand—
the wind does not move.
Also in Library
The Silence of Scales
A staircase inhales, and silence thickens between stone scales. Each step remembers serpents once carved, pearl-light gathering in its breath. In this luminous flash gem, a traveller climbs toward hush and revelation, where silence itself becomes flame. A tale brief as an exhalation, yet lingering like pearl-light beneath moss.
The Crocodile and the Moon Eel: A Tide-Bargain
A crocodile waits in hush where river bends to moonlight. From the silt, a pearl-lit eel rises, whispering a bargain of scale and tide. What is given is never returned whole: hunger meets silence, storm keeps watch, and the river writes its law in breath.
Field Note: Blue Hour at Angkor
The blue hour settles over Angkor like a hush in stone. Naga coils dissolve into shadow, carvings soften into silence, and hunger without teeth endures. A sketch becomes listening. Each fracture is a hymn, each hollow a river. A field note on patience, memory, and the stillness that lingers.
$260
Angkor Wat Temple, Angkor, Cambodia — 2021
Limited Edition Archival Pigment Print
Edition
Strictly limited to 25 prints + 2 Artist’s Proofs
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
9.25 x 7.3 inches (23.5 x 18.5 cm)
She waits high above the jungle path—still as a prayer unspoken.
At the western gate of Angkor Wat, a devata stands in stone yet lives in light. Carved centuries ago, she lifts a blossom in silent offering. The air around her is hushed. Her gaze does not hold the present—it holds the sun she once knew. She is not seen. She is felt. She is stillness in the flame of stone.
Lucas Varro composed the image in silence, just as the final warmth of day rose from the sandstone. Captured on large-format black-and-white film with a long exposure, the image was later shaped in the studio through classical chiaroscuro. The hand-toning in gold was the final act—restoring her radiance, gesture by gesture.
Printed on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, this hand-toned archival pigment print is offered in a strictly limited edition of 25 + 2 Artist’s Proofs.
She carries the fire
without moving.
Click here to follow her golden stillness into the Artist’s Journal.
