Summer Camp
In the summer of 2001 I photographed a secret training camp in Eastern Europe and a group of men who had travelled from all over the world to be there. Their concern was preparedness for the world of close protection and privatised military deployment and to gain the currency that sub-contracted security and military personnel would need in the increasing privatisation of conflict. They had come to be instructed in exotic weaponry and learn evasive techniques. This was still when the private security and private military industries existed below the radar and occupied a peripheral place in global conflict. This would change after the September 11th attacks that occurred in the month after the summer training camp had come to an end. After this, security would become a ubiquitous twenty-first century service industry and many men, like the ones depicted, would go on to deployment in the era of the war on terror.