French photographer Thomas Jorion spent a decade taking shots of abandoned eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Italian mansions for his series Veduta. “At first I photographed them to keep a trace of the places before they disappeared,” says Jorion in an interview for My Modern Met. “And then I realized that there was a beauty, an aesthetic, that emerges with shapes, colors, and lights. I do not necessarily look for abandonment, but rather the patina of time.” Write a short story in which your main character encounters a now forgotten, but once majestic, building. Explore the feelings that are stirred as a result of encountering this crumbling beauty. Is there a certain, sustained charm to be found in this remnant of the past, or is it overshadowed by the ephemeral aspect of this man-made structure?
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