Sangre Blanca

Danish photographer Mads Nissen explores the dark underworld of the cocaine trade in Colombia and reveals the human toll of the world’s most popular party drug.

Colombia is the main producer of cocaine in the world, fuelled by demand from the US and Europe and Nissen has documented both the intricacies of the trade and lives impacted as well as the civil war in Colombia since 2010. The economics of the cocaine drug trade, intertwined with poverty and inequality, in a county with an ingrained history and culture of violence, has fed the cycle of unrest.

With artwork by Juan Arreaza and accompanying texts by Paola Devia Barco, María Jimena Duzán and Santiago Rivas.

Mads Nissen (b. 1979) is a three-time recipient of the main prize at World Press Photo. In 2023 with a work from the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. In 2021 with the image ’The First Embrace’ taken during the covid-19 pandemic -and in 2015 with an intimate image of the Russian gay couple Jon and Alex. His work has received more than ninety-five international awards including the POY’s 2023 ’International Photographer of the Year’. He lives in Copenhagen, Denmark with his wife and three children