When Joy Was Carved
What passes between them is not ours to name—
but it remains.
In the courtyard of Angkor Wat’s second level, beneath the five central towers, two devatas stand side by side, emerging from an unfinished wall as if they had stepped forward from the unseen. Each bears a lotus. Each smile—curved, quiet, knowing—suggests a story long told and still echoing.
They are not guardians. Not dancers.
They are companions.
Their presence is not decorative—it is devotional.
Lucas Varro encountered them at the edge of evening, when the sandstone still shimmered with the day’s last warmth. He worked with large-format black-and-white film, capturing not the detail of their form, but the hush of their exchange. In the darkroom, classical chiaroscuro revealed their depth. Later, the image was hand-toned in gold—not as embellishment, but as offering. A return to the light they once received.
What the Lotus Sisters Know is a rare gesture within the Spirit of Angkor series—an image of playfulness that never loses its gravity. It invites the viewer not into study, but into presence. It does not explain the sacred. It smiles with it.
—
There are moments the stone remembers.
This is one of them.
Two devatas, hand in light, stand in a silence that laughs. Their gestures are nearly twin, yet not the same. What passes between them is ancient, and golden. The photograph does not record them. It listens.
Captured with large-format black-and-white film and shaped through chiaroscuro, the final image is hand-toned in gold on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper. Each print is finished individually—an edition of 25 + 2 Artist’s Proofs, each one its own breath of silence.
To live with this image is to welcome the kind of joy that endures without needing to be spoken.
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 — 2020
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
9.5 x 6.8 inches (24.1 x 17.3 cm)
There are devatas who guard, and devatas who guide—but these two, carved in gold-shadowed stone at the courtyard of Angkor Wat’s second floor, do something rarer still: they smile. And what passes between them is not silence, but sisterhood.
The sandstone wall from which they emerge was left unfinished, and perhaps because of this, their presence feels even more alive—two figures poised mid-laughter, lotus blossoms resting across their shoulders like garlands passed between gods. They are nearly identical, yet subtly distinct, and in that tension blooms a sacred mischief.
Captured by Lucas Varro on large-format black-and-white film in the golden hush of evening, the image was shaped with classical chiaroscuro and later hand-toned in gold. This final gesture—the gold—was not for show, but for remembrance: a way to honour what the light had once touched, and what it now leaves behind.
Printed on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper, each impression is hand-toned, signed, and presented in a strictly Limited Edition of 25 + 2 Artist’s Proofs. These are not multiples, but meditations.
To live with this image is to welcome the hush of joy into your home.
Click here to follow their whispered laughter into the Artist’s Journal.