The Blossom She Holds Is Not From Earth
The air at the gate had thickened with reverence. I arrived as the jungle exhaled the day. There was no wind, only the scent of heated stone and the gentle rise of shadow. Every surface seemed to breathe. Every silence felt inhabited.
She waited there. Not poised. Not frozen. Present.
Her flower was not cut—it had bloomed long before I arrived. Her gesture, quiet and exact, seemed to hold a thousand evenings within it. I did not arrange the frame. I entered it. My hand moved, yes, but my body was still. In her stillness, I remembered mine.
The photograph was made on large-format film, the exposure long, the light deep. Later, in my studio, the shaping began. I did not apply gold. I revealed it. The toning emerged like memory—quiet, slow, and full of breath.
She was not carved for us. She was carved for light.
And the light returned.
—
She does not move
but presence gathers
where her hand hovers.
The stone behind her
blooms like silence
beneath a thousand kalas.
Evening spills inward.
Light leaves the air
but lingers in her.
Her body
remembers
something
older
than sun.
More from the Library
The Leaf and the Pencil
A leaf holds my attention. Then I remember that I can draw. The pencil reveals things I had never noticed, but introduces its own demands: proportion, shading, the desire to make something beautiful. When I try to describe the encounter, language presents another difficulty. An essay about the uncertain distance between looking at something, understanding it, and being present with it.
The Work We Return To
We have become very good at measuring persistence, and less good at asking what deserves it.
A musician begins the same passage again. A writer returns to an unfinished sentence. Someone stands before a familiar face carved in stone, with nothing new to photograph.
What brings us back when enthusiasm has gone? And how do we distinguish devotion from the demands that quietly consume the rest of our lives?
Under the Gallery
Rain, a carved hand, and the small movements of lives separated by centuries. A new literary piece from The Vow.
$895
Angkor Wat Temple, Angkor, Cambodia — 2019
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
39.6 x 19.8 inches (100.6 x 50.3 cm)
She rises from the sandstone like a breath returning—crowned in fire, cloaked in stillness, and held in the last light of day. This is not a carving, but a remembrance.
At the western gate of Angkor Wat, where the jungle exhales and shadows lengthen, a devata stands poised. The air hums with cicadas. Light falls not from above, but wells up from the stone itself. Her gesture—one hand raised in offering—feels less like movement than a memory held.
Made on large-format black-and-white film in the hush of evening, the photograph was later shaped using classical chiaroscuro and carefully hand-toned in gold. The process was devotional. The goal: not to capture, but to consecrate.
This signed and numbered print is rendered on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper and offered in a limited edition of 25 + 2 Artist’s Proofs.
To dwell with her is to enter the silence where light still lingers.
Click here to enter the Artist’s Journal and follow the gold her spirit remembers.