We were trekking somewhere in Latvia when an old woman in a village told us about a building farther along the path. She said it was built in the ’90s and might make an interesting picture. We didn’t get much more of the story due to the language barrier. The path led to a damaged, rusty fence in the wilderness. The fence was easy enough to get through, even though there was a fresh padlock on the gate. I took the photograph from a small ridge across from the building. I asked my traveling companion to stand near the door. We never figured out the full story of the place, and I don’t know if I could ever find my way back there. Inspired by The Met’s archive and the #FLORAMuseum contest. Image and process below.

The real starting point for the above is a small, marble bust in The Met’s collection. I came across Jean Antoine Houdon’s “Sabine Houdon (1787–1836),” while browsing the archive. I started wondering what it would look like as an enormous building in a post-apocalyptic state. I built the image in FLORA, developing it with Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana Pro, then adjusting the color grading and upscaling with Magnific. Getting the scale to read how I wanted without a diorama or tilt-shift look took some work. The finished image made me want to write an short story of stumbling upon it. This is my second entry for the FLORA Museum Challenge. Explore the public FLORA canvas: https://app.flora.ai/join-project/1bff2f91-05ad-4318-b0f6-6f93843a2b7d Original artwork at The Met: https://metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/200668