Changes of use and fluctuations in the real estate market, combined with legacy issues, have left modern metropolises with a huge stock of unused buildings, very often next to perfectly functional buildings. These modern ruins are often covered by large expanses of graffiti and street art. In recent years, with a focus on places like Japan or Eastern Europe, a new scientific and artistic field has opened up around urban exploration. Ruin photography, sometimes called Ruin Porn, is a recent movement in photography that takes as its subject the deterioration of the built environment (cities, buildings or infrastructure). Ruin photography documents the abandonment and decay of cities in particular and has sparked debates about the role of art in various urban renewal, restoration and conservation projects in cities around the world. During its course, street art has received the most contradictory characterizations, from “metropolitan primitivism” to that of “the last authentic site of a natural artistic expression” (beyond commerce and institutions). But which of these is true? Every European metropolis, every metropolis perhaps, displays graffiti in its suburbs, industrial areas, run-down areas, railway bridges… But the peculiarity of Athens is that we find them not only in central residential and commercial areas (Exarchia, Kolonaki) but also in the main traffic arteries of the city (Stadiou, Panepistimiou, Akademias, Patission).”The graffiti could be described as ‘tattoos on the skin of the building’.