Where Teeth Become Flame
A hush moves through the Western Gallery—not wind, not footfall, but the weight of breath holding its shape. The scent of sandalwood clings to the seams of stone. I pause beside a relief I have passed many times. Today it catches.
Limbs whirl in carved tumult, but I see only two: vanara and rakshasa. A monkey’s jaw clenched against demon flesh, not in fury, but in something deeper. This is not the climax of battle. It is its still center. A mouth made votive. A bite that burns clean.
The shutter opens as I still my body. Film gathers the silence. Long exposure lets devotion pool in silver. Later, hand-toning will reveal what light alone cannot: how even violence, when offered in full surrender, can become holy.
I breathe, then write—just two lines in my notebook:
Even stone sings when bitten—
hear the startled hymn
between pulse and dust.
And so it sings. In muscle curved like flame. In thigh and tooth. In the hush that fills the frame when love becomes fearless. When duty sheds its weight and becomes light.
Also in Library
Garuda and the Serpent · Flight and Surrender
Between Garuda’s wings and the Nāga’s coils, Angkor breathes its oldest truth: flight and surrender are one motion. In the carvings where sky and water entwine, the pilgrim learns that freedom depends upon gravity, and that stillness itself is a kind of flight.
The Measure of Silence: A Pilgrim’s Reflection on Kingship at Angkor
Through the ruins of Angkor, a curatorial pilgrim traces the vanished geometry of divine rule. In the silence of the stones, kingship reveals itself as both devotion and decay—an empire of alignment turned elegy, where even ruin retains the measure of sacred order.
The Pilgrim’s Guide to Cambodia’s Beginnings
In the caves of Laang Spean, in the myth of a dragon princess, in the echoes of Funan and Chenla — Cambodia’s beginnings endure. This essay walks with ancestors through soil, stone, and water, tracing how the first Cambodians shaped rice, ritual, and memory into a living continuity that still breathes today.
$250
Devotion, Unbound
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 the birds herald day, a dusky hush clings to Angkor Wat’s Western Gallery. Within that hush, two figures ignite—a vanara’s jaws closing upon a rakshasa’s thigh, their limbs blazing across the centuries in unwavering purpose. The wall itself seems to inhale, holding the precise moment when loyalty surpasses fear.
This stillness hums with unseen currents: sandalwood breeze, latent thunder, the breath of hundreds of stone warriors who bear silent witness. Yet all sound recedes into the gravity of this single bite, chiselled conviction etched into sandstone and darkness alike.
Lucas Varro knelt for this encounter as one might kneel at a shrine: heart quiet, shutter poised, body stilled to receive what the wall would disclose. Medium-format black-and-white film gathered the lingering night; long exposure let devotion root itself in silver. Later, chiaroscuro shaping and hand-toning coaxed hidden embers to the surface, until violence revealed its secret tenderness.
Strictly limited to twenty-five prints with two Artist’s Proofs, each sheet rests on museum-grade Hahnemühle Bamboo paper whose warm fibers cradle the image like well-worn prayer beads. Signed, numbered, and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, every impression bears the trace of the artist’s steady hand.
Invite this fierce serenity into the room where your quietest questions wait.
To walk further into the silence behind the stone, click here to enter the Artist’s Journal.
Previously titled ‘Battle of Lanka I, Study I, 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.
