Ruin photography has become increasingly popular in the last decade. How can we understand the representations of the postindustrial city it offers? This paper analyses the practice and the images of ruin photography, by focusing especially on photographs of abandonned houses. Could these images be considered as « portraits » of houses, seeking to express the personality and the persistent life of the ruins? Following this interpretation, different avenues of analysis are opened: a reflexion on the temporality of photography and the temporality of ruins; the relation between images and death; the invisibility of people living in shrinking cities; and the future of contemporary ‘inhabitation’.