While London’s Olympic planners apply the finishing touches to their bright new arenas, in Athens, the site of the 2004 summer games, a not-so-ancient set of structures fades from memory.

Unlike the Acropolis or the Temple of Zeus, these modern-day ruins recall a recent past, and reveal how a lack of planning, foresight and effective leadership put billions of dollars’ worth of new construction on a path to decrepitude.

Past glories and man-altered landscapes fascinate the British photographer Jamie McGregor Smith, who went to Athens in 2011 to photograph the arenas and stadiums of the 2004 games. The competitions have always represented a nexus of boasts: nationalism, ability and strength — and Mr. McGregor Smith, in his project, “Borrow, Build, Abandon,” puzzles over how swiftly their glories pale over time. Ideas of “spatial change” and “forgotten human structures” inform the series, which will be on view at Print House Gallery in London from Sept. 7 through Oct. 3. It will be a quiet contrast to the loud, nearly uninterrupted celebrating going on in London this year. (Jubilee, anyone?)

What particularly struck Mr. McGregor Smith in Athens was the gulf between the ingenuity needed to erect the huge designs and the planning that was lacking — to have a purpose for these structures beyond 2004.

“You look at it all and think, how can the amount of time, money, energy and resources be so squandered by indecision? It’s about this lack of adaptation,” said Mr. McGregor Smith, 30.

Mr. McGregor Smith has been drawn to rusting structures and dimmed glories since obtaining his university degree at Staffordshire University in central England in 2006. Other projects, like “Ironopolis,” which is continuing, involve photographing industrial buildings in disuse — factories whose heyday in the 19th century helped assert England as the most powerful nation for decades. Likewise, the de-peopled landscapes of “Motor City” show the physical remnants of a once-proud American institution now forsaken, inviting consideration of future and past.

Showing how completely unwanted the Athens complex is, Mr. McGregor Smith said with surprise that he was able simply to walk onto the site, where he was completely alone. “No one intruded on my peaceful documentation,” he said. There was a little security (and upkeep, at significant annual cost to the Greek government), but less interference or even human presence.

He described vast concrete fields where for two mere months there was parking. “It’s just bonkers,” he said. “It could have been wetlands or park area, right up to the coastline. This idea of concrete — this sheer concrete with sea all around it that was never used. It’s a real pity.” And it’s a humbling lesson.

Athens, classically understood as a wellspring of Western civilization, is now widely pilloried as a crisis-addled economic tragedy, crippled by austerity and restive as a result. “The economy of the country didn’t pick up in the 19th century as other countries did,” he said, “and it’s almost ironic that it was once this powerful seat of technology, philosophy, education and science — and now it’s the black sheep of Europe.”

London might take note. As Mr. McGregor Smith, who lives in London, said, there will be consequences, though Britons have little reason to anticipate monumental ruins of a brief yet fervent international competition. The concern is what will happen to those forced out of affordable housing as developers pounce with seemingly lucrative plans for the surrounding areas.

When it comes time for the current host city to grapple with the legacy of its Olympic Games, it should look to Athens, Mr. McGregor Smith said. Eventually, the parties of 2012 will quiet, the fallen ticker tape will be swept away. What will remain, and who will adapt?

Jamie McGregor Smith

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