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The Secret Security Guard The Olympic Games held in London in the summer of 2012 marked a shift – a rubicon in the way our city operates. The army patrolled the streets, missiles were placed on rooftops, battleships were moored on the River Thames, surveillance blimps monitored us from the sky above, protests were banned and 30,000 new CCTV cameras were installed. Within this State controlled environment companies specializing in security and defence reported a massive increase in profits. None more so than G4S, the largest private security company in the world, employing 657,000 people in 125 countries. G4S were awarded the £284 million contract to deliver security for London 2012, with chaotic consequences. Henrietta Williams interviewed with G4s in January and, after training in March and July, ended up working as a security guard and x-ray screener based at the Olympic Park in Stratford for the duration of the Games in July and August 2012. Alongside fulfilling her duties for G4S she also worked as an undercover reporter for the Guardian writing a column called ‘The Secret Security Guard’. If you would like to read the articles published in the Guardian please click here Henrietta also consistently photographed her shifts covertly on her IPhone. This body of photographs shows a world of mundane chaos behind the scenes of the Olympics: recruits being trained in methods of restraint; deployment alongside the army at the Olympics; the monotony of guarding and working the x-ray screening machines; images of the fortification of the Olympic site; and the haunting emptiness of the park on night shifts. These are images of people dressed in G4S uniforms playing at being security guards – a moment in time when hyper-security became normal.