The Moment Before Form
Just before light, the stones held a kind of tenderness. Not soft, but listening. The temple beyond the veil of clouds did not rise. It hovered. Unfinished. Waiting.
I moved as if underwater. Not toward the temple, but into stillness. Every gesture was slowed by reverence. I exposed the frame not to capture—but to dwell within.
And in the darkroom, I remembered how the silence had touched me first.
stone under silence—
light waits on the breathless path
before it begins
Also in Library
Stone That Remembers the Sky
This poem listens to Angkor not as ruin, but as grammar—where moss, shadow, and proportion carry devotion forward without spectacle. What endures here is not glory, but measure: a way of standing that no longer needs witnesses.
Rice-Ghost and the Seven Drums
At harvest, the danger is not hunger but forgetting how to listen.
This folklore retelling speaks of drums struck for silence, of grain taken without gratitude, and of a narrow figure who does not punish—only waits. A tale of pacts made not with spirits, but with attention itself.
Naga Vow
A lost city sleeps in the jungle, its thresholds carved with serpents — not ornament, but law. This vow-poem enters love as sacred hunger: desire as guardianship, devotion as possession, the body speaking without language. A liturgy of heat, roots, rain, and the terrible tenderness of being claimed.
$250
Angkor Wat Temple, Angkor, Cambodia — 2020
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)
Before first light touches stone, before the world is named, the western causeway of Angkor Wat extends like a breath held in the body of the earth. No footsteps echo. The sky holds its silence in cloudlight.
The naga balustrades curve inward like gestures of remembrance. Their symmetry does not lead to a structure, but to presence. The temple’s towers wait on the horizon, not to be seen—but to be met. Here, in the hush before form, something sacred begins.
Lucas Varro entered this space before dawn, passing through the western gopura in darkness. He stood without framing or thought, listening. The camera’s bellows opened like a breath. The long exposure received not an image, but a moment of surrender.
Captured on large format black-and-white film, the photograph was shaped using classical chiaroscuro techniques and hand-toned by the artist. The final print is an archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, offered in a strictly limited edition of 25 + 2 Artist’s Proofs.
Each one a threshold, waiting to be crossed in silence.
Click here to enter the Artist’s Journal and walk deeper into the hush.
Previously titled ‘Causeway, Angkor Wat Temple, Cambodia. 2020,’ this photograph has been renamed to better reflect its place in the series and its spiritual tone. The edition, provenance, and authenticity remain unchanged.
