The Light That Stepped into Stillness
To lift one foot in light is to begin a prayer.
Ta Prohm reveals its secrets softly. Carvings half-veiled by vines. Echoes beneath the canopy. It was near dusk when Lucas Varro noticed a small medallion embedded in the sandstone—so subtle it might have gone unseen.
Within it, a deer raised one hoof inside a circle of carved foliage. The gesture was precise, poised—not frozen, but eternally unfolding. For a few golden minutes, the jungle light touched the stone as if in communion. The image does not depict movement, but remembers it.
That remembrance forms the heart of When the Deer Danced the Sun Down.
Captured on medium format black-and-white film in 2021, the photograph was shaped using classical chiaroscuro to invite emotional depth and visual stillness. The final print is hand-toned in gold—honouring the molten hush of dusk that had illuminated the deer not with spectacle, but with grace.
Printed on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, the work is available in a signed and numbered edition of 25 + 2 Artist’s Proofs. Each piece is not merely a document of sacred ruin, but a devotional artefact—where light becomes a gesture, and stillness becomes breath.
To those who receive it, the image offers more than an aesthetic encounter. It offers a quiet threshold—into time remembered, light received, and prayer in the form of a single raised hoof.
More from the Library
Houses of Wood, Light, and Smoke
Some of Angkor’s most intimate ruins do not rise above the ground at all. They are postholes, low mounds, hearths and ponds: durable traces of a domestic city built largely from things that decay. To restore that city is to see Angkor not only as stone, but as wood, smoke, water, repair, and people living within calling distance.
What Stone Brings Forth
I had mistaken a gift for something being expelled.
Beneath the nāga's mouth, a stone garland descended bead by bead. Nearby, a makara opened its jaws and another form emerged. Looking closer, the whole temple began to change: serpent became ornament, ornament became architecture, architecture became foliage.
The forest did not introduce this language.
It answered it.
The Eighth Daughter
Seven daughters have already been taken by Yamata-no-Orochi when Susanoo reaches the River Hi. Only Kushinada-hime remains. The Eighth Daughter retells the Kojiki episode through a family’s waiting, a girl transformed into a comb, and the patient preparation for the serpent’s return.
$895
Ta Prohm, Temple, 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)
A deer, encircled by stone leaves, raises one hoof into light that feels both remembered and newly born. When the Deer Danced the Sun Down captures a moment not of action, but of invocation—a gesture held in silence that seemed to draw dusk from the sky.
At Ta Prohm Temple, as the Cambodian sun vanished behind the jungle canopy, a sandstone medallion shimmered with sudden presence. The deer appeared to glow from within, its curved form receiving light as breath, not surface. The image evokes sacred circularity—motion paused in eternity.
Captured on medium format black-and-white film with long exposure, the photograph was later shaped using classical chiaroscuro techniques to reveal its quiet gravity. Each print is hand-toned in gold, echoing the molten warmth of that sacred dusk.
Printed on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, this archival pigment print is signed and numbered in a strictly limited edition of 25 + 2 Artist’s Proofs.
Let it offer stillness—the kind that glows in the corner of your room long after the sun has gone.
Click here to enter the Artist’s Journal and step deeper into the hush behind the light.