The Flame She Carried Within
Even before I saw her, the light changed. It no longer fell from the sky but rose softly from the stone, as if the sandstone itself were remembering. The western gate of Angkor Wat opened in silence. Cicadas turned their chant inward. The last warmth of the day gathered along the walls like the breath of something sacred.
And there she stood.
Crowned in fire, draped in carved adornments, offering a single blossom held as though it had always been in her hand. Not symbolic. Not ornamental. A gesture as real as breath. I lowered the tripod with care. Each movement slowed by reverence, not decision. She did not ask to be captured—only received.
Her stillness carried a heat that was not temperature, but memory.
Weeks later, I shaped the print slowly, the way one shapes smoke. I listened as I worked. The chiaroscuro emerged gently. The gold I added with a brush as fine as whispering. It was not toning. It was return.
She did not shimmer. She remembered.
she does not shimmer—
she waits where the sun once stood,
gold beneath her skin
Also in Library
The Silence of Scales
A staircase inhales, and silence thickens between stone scales. Each step remembers serpents once carved, pearl-light gathering in its breath. In this luminous flash gem, a traveller climbs toward hush and revelation, where silence itself becomes flame. A tale brief as an exhalation, yet lingering like pearl-light beneath moss.
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.
$270
Angkor Wat Temple, Angkor, Cambodia — 2019
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
11.5 x 5.8 inches (29.2 x 14.7 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.
