Stillness Shelters Light
Stillness is audible; the temple listens back.
In Angkor Wat’s cruciform gallery—once the Hall of a Thousand Buddhas—a lone figure endures: the Enlightened One beneath Muchilinda’s vigilant coils. Before dawn, Lucas Varro met this hush. Flagstones were cool, lampblack shadows intact. A single shaft of morning settled upon the serpent’s brow, and the shutter closed as softly as eyelids in meditation.
Medium-format black-and-white film received the silence. In the studio, chiaroscuro coaxed depth; hand-toning warmed the stone until it seemed to inhale its own radiance. The resulting print, Anahata Nada—the unstruck sound—belongs to the inward current of the Spirit of Angkor series. It makes no declaration; it waits.
Printed on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper and limited to twenty-five numbered impressions with two artist’s proofs, each sheet bears the quiet tally of devotion. Signed, authenticated, and presented in archival harmony, the work offers not an object of veneration but a space that listens with you.
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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.
At the River’s Bend
Dusk leans against the bank and the water forgets its hurry. A heron holds one bead of light. In the reeds, someone counts—commas between breaths. The river practises memory; cicadas re-thread a broken necklace. Perhaps art is only this: placing the pause so the note can be heard.
$260
"The unstruck sound"
Angkor Wat Temple, Cambodia — 2017
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)
Dawn enters the cruciform gallery like a withheld breath—soft, soundless, reverent. In that shadowed hush, a naga coils skyward to shelter the meditating Buddha, their forms echoing a pact between storm and silence.
The air still tastes of long-faded incense. Light moves as remembrance, touching stone older than vision. Beneath the serpent’s hood, the Buddha’s eyes remain half-closed—not in sleep, but in radiant listening.
I exposed a single frame on medium-format black-and-white film, trusting the patience of long exposure to honour what the eye alone cannot keep. In the darkroom, chiaroscuro deepened the tonal hush; hand-toning later revealed the muted radiance lodged within shadow.
Each print rests on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, hand-toned, signed, and numbered within a strictly limited edition of 25 with 2 Artist’s Proofs.
Welcome this listening stillness as a threshold within your own walls.
Click here to enter the Artist’s Journal, where the unstruck sound quietly unfolds.
Previously titled ‘Buddha I, Angkor Wat Temple, Cambodia. 2017,’ this photograph has been renamed to better reflect its place in the series and its spiritual tone. The edition, provenance, and authenticity remain unchanged.
