“Outside the Gopura, the Breath Waited”
“The breath of the world lives longest in stone.”
I stood just outside the eastern gopura. Rain had ended hours ago, but the hush remained—drifting through tree limbs, seeping from moss-dark stone, clinging to the underside of banyan roots. The ground was wet beneath my feet, yet the air above her felt untouched. The apsara faced east, not toward the sky, but inward, as though listening for something that still lived behind the wall.
Light had not yet crested the lintel. Her smile—worn but unbroken—carried the soft memory of water. The lotus in her hand looked neither carved nor placed. It simply rested there, as if it had always belonged.
I didn’t move. Not from reverence, but from the sense that I had stepped into someone else’s memory. Her gesture, her gaze, her stillness—they asked nothing, but made asking unnecessary.
Eventually I brought the camera forward. The tripod sank slightly in the softened earth. I didn’t adjust it. The angle was already correct. I focused slowly, without expectation, and waited for the air to rise a little more.
The shutter fell like a leaf returning to its source.
stone holds what rain leaves
lotus offering to light
smile the dawn can’t move
Also in Library
From Mountain to Monastery
Angkor Wat survived by learning to change its posture. Built as a summit for gods and kings, it became a place of dwelling for monks and pilgrims. As belief shifted from ascent to practice, stone yielded to routine—and the mountain learned how to remain inhabited.
Why Theravada Could Outlast Stone
Theravada endured by refusing monumentality. It shifted belief from stone to practice, from kings to villages, from permanence to repetition. What it preserved was not form but rhythm—robes, bowls, chants, and lives lived close together—allowing faith to travel when capitals fell and temples emptied.
The End of Sanskrit at Angkor
The final Sanskrit inscription at Angkor does not announce an ending. It simply speaks once more, with elegance and certainty, into a world that had begun to listen differently. Its silence afterward marks not collapse, but a quiet transfer of meaning—from stone and proclamation to practice, breath, and impermanence.
$250
Banteay Kdei Temple, Angkor, Cambodia — 2023
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
8 x 8 inches (20.3 x 20.3 cm)
The corridor still carries the hush of vanished rain. In that hush, an apsara lifts a lotus—not in ceremony, but as quiet offering. Her smile curves like the memory of water.
At Banteay Kdei, where stone breathes beneath banyan limbs and light takes its time, grace lives not in perfection but in presence. This carving, worn by centuries of weather and worship, seems to glow from within the ruin’s silence.
I stood before her in stillness, camera on tripod, the moment unhurried. One long exposure on medium-format black-and-white film captured what I could not name. In the studio, I shaped the chiaroscuro by hand, layering tone and shadow until the image recalled the breath I felt between her and the dawn.
Printed as a hand-toned archival pigment print on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, each impression is part of a strictly limited edition of 25, with 2 Artist’s Proofs.
Welcome this threshold of grace into the stillness of your own space.
Click here to enter the Artist’s Journal and walk deeper into the breath behind the stone.
