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.
Also in Library
The Devata at First Light
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.
$250
Ta Prohm, Temple, Angkor, Cambodia — 2021
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)
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.
