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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At first light in Banteay Kdei, a devata draws the eye into stillness. Through sanguine chalk, black shadow, and repeated returns to the page, sketch and prose slowly deepen into a single act of devotion—until the words, too, learn how to remain.
The Spark and the Weight of Being Human
At some point in our past, a human asked the first question—and self-awareness was born. Yet the same consciousness that gave us power also confronts us with our limits. This essay explores the paradox of being human: the spark of understanding and the weight of knowing.
The Pact of the Uncounted Grain
A village does not starve only when rice runs out. It begins to thin when everything is counted, explained, and held too tightly. The Pact of the Uncounted Grain remembers an older law: that once each season, abundance must pass through human hands without measure, or the world begins, quietly, to lose its meaning.
$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.
