Shadow and Stone
Artist’s Field Journal
Shadow and Stone
Ta Prohm Temple, Angkor – Spirit of Angkor Series
Black-and-white film, hand-toned archival pigment print
The shadows came first—cool, vast, and breathing. Before even the first light of dawn crept in through the broken lintels, they were already there: waiting. They gathered like memory along the corridor walls, veiling the stone in silence, folding time into texture.
I stepped softly into the gallery as one might step into a dream half-remembered. Each pillar stood like a monk in meditation, cloaked in shadow, carved with time. Light arrived slowly—tentatively—touching the edges of stone, revealing not form, but feeling.
This is where the visible gives way to the invisible. Where shadow does not obscure, but reveals—through absence, through hush. Photographing here is not about seeing more, but seeing less… and in that less, discovering what endures.
The exposure was long, as was the stillness I kept. The lens gathered shadow like water into a vessel, and only then, when stone had revealed its inner hush, did light begin to speak.
shadow enters first
stone listens without answer—
stillness opening
Also in Library
The Stone Is Not the World
A contemplative Angkor essay on how surviving stone has shaped the way Angkor is seen — and why the vanished world of wood, water, labour, smoke, roads, bodies, weather, and devotion must be allowed to return around the temples in What the Stone Hides.
The Consolation of Not Being Separate
There are moments when the world refuses to become personal. The rain falls on the day you needed sun. The illness does not pause because someone is loved. The sea does not soften because a child is afraid. And when the thing prayed against happens anyway, it can feel as if the world has abandoned us. But perhaps what has failed is not the world’s care. Perhaps what has failed is our idea of care.
The Face That Looks Four Ways
The faces of the Bayon have been called Brahma, Lokeshvara, Jayavarman VII, and Vajrasattva. This essay examines the evidence behind each theory and argues that their deepest meaning may lie in a royal-Buddhist synthesis: compassion given the scale of empire.
$895
Ta Prohm, Angkor, Cambodia — 2021
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)
Here, light does not arrive. It returns—brushing the ancient corridor of Ta Prohm Temple with a hush so soft it feels inherited. One side of the gallery glows with early breath; the other listens in shadow. The space curves slightly, gently concealing its end. Stillness gathers in the silence between each pillar.
Captured just before dawn, the eastern gallery reveals itself not through spectacle but restraint. The air hangs with moss and age. No voice disturbs it. Every line of stone, every nuance of shade, seems shaped not by hand but by time held in prayer.
The artist entered this space as one would enter a sanctuary—with breath slowed, presence quieted. Using a large format analogue camera, he waited in long exposure for the light to speak. Later, in the darkroom, chiaroscuro shaping and hand-toning gave voice to that silence—layered until feeling overtook form.
This museum-grade archival pigment print is rendered on warm, tactile Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, in a strictly limited edition of 25 + 2 Artist’s Proofs. Each is signed and numbered by the artist and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity and Collector’s Print Folio Statement.
To welcome this image is to open a space where stone and breath remember each other.
To walk deeper into the stillness, click here to enter the Artist’s Journal.
Previously titled ‘Gallery, Ta Prohm Temple, Angkor, Cambodia. 2021,’ this photograph has been renamed to better reflect its place in the series and its spiritual tone. The edition, provenance, and authenticity remain unchanged.