Fortifying the city: Visualising London 2012

Abstract

This paper proposes the London Olympics 2012 as a clear example of Stephen Graham’s military urbanism in action. Using the structure of a visual essay with an accompanying introductory text, this paper argues that the visibility of the security structures at the Olympics functioned as a stage-set of securitization. The importance of the image in terrorism/counter-terrorism is set against the backdrop of the 7/7 bombings as a way to establish the context of the London Olympics as a moment when the city was transformed into a landscape of hyper-security and to document the segregated city this produced. A photographic methodology is proposed as a way to document, analyse and critique these security structures in action.

KEYWORDS:

• Olympics
• Terrorism
• Security
• Fortress Urbanism
• Media
• Photography

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Correction

ORCID

Henrietta Williams http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5970-6679

Notes on contributor

Henrietta Williams is a Teaching Fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her projects on surveillance and security have been widely exhibited and published in the UK and internationally, most notably at the V&A Museum and on the front page of the Guardian. She is currently working towards a practice-based AHRC funded PhD in Architectural Design also at the Bartlett focusing on aerial surveillance. www.henriettawilliams.com

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03058034.2020.1720064)

Notes

1 S. Graham, ‘Olympics 2012 security: welcome to lockdown London’, Guardian, 9 November 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/mar/12/london-olympics-security-lockdown-london> [accessed 30 November 2018].

2 P. Virilio, City of Panic, trans. J. Rose (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 86.

3 P. Fussey, J. Coaffee, G. Armstrong, and D. Hobbs (eds.), Securing and Sustaining the Olympic City: Reconfiguring London for 2012 and Beyond (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 3.

4 M. Neocleous, War Power, Police Power (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 208.

5 P. Virilio, City of Panic, 95.

6 P. Fussey, ‘The Book of Olympic Promises’ in Securing and Sustaining the Olympic City, 110.

7 P. Fussey, ‘Command, Control and Contestation: Negotiating Security at the London 2012 Olympics’, The Geographical Journal, 181:3 (September 2015), 212–23, 212.

8 S. Graham, ‘Olympics 2012 security: welcome to lockdown London’, Guardian, 9 November 2011 <https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/mar/12/london-olympics-security-lockdown-london> [accessed 30 November 2018].

9 S. Graham, Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (London: Verso, 2010), 73.

10 S. Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (London: Penguin, 2003), 76–77.

11 V. Burgin, Thinking Photography (London: Macmillan, 1982), 131.

12 M. Neocleous, War Power, Police Power (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 193.

13 M. Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (London: Verso, 1990), 224.

14 J. Coaffee, ‘Olympic Architectures of Safety and Security’ in Securing and Sustaining the Olympic City, 118.

15 P. Fussey, ‘Command, Control and Contestation’, 218.

16 Ibid., 216.

17 Burgin, Thinking Photography, 180.

18 A. Azoulay, The Civil Contract of Photography (New York: Zone Books, 2008), 2.

19 Ibid., 351.