This new reportage book—Sangre Blanca—by award winning documentary photographer Mads Nissen (b.Denmark, 1979), his most significant body of work to date, delves into the murky depths of the cocaine trade, examining the human consequences along its journey—from the neglected countryside of Colombia to cartel lands of Mexico, to (c)raving consumers on a European dancefloor. The publication, with photos taken between 2016 and 2025, takes us across countries and continents over almost a decade.
Illegal drugs now constitute the world’s largest black market, bringing in corruption, underdevelopment, and extraordinarily high murder rates, particularly in South and Central America.Entire societies and nations are being destabilized. Despite decades of war and countless efforts to stop it, Colombia remains at the epicentre of the business. No country produces more cocaine (approximately two-thirds, according to UNODC), and no country has suffered more. From Colombia, cocaine travels by land, sea, and air to reach buyers, mainly in the U.S. and Europe. At every stop, the cocaine business both gives and takes.
In Mexico, a key transit hub, the lucrative trade has empowered narco-cartels so immensely that many levels of society seem entangled in their influence. Meanwhile, their heavily armed cartels spread terror and instability, forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. In Europe, cocaine use is becoming increasingly socially acceptable. The continent has now become the largest market in the world, driving demand even higher. From a safe distance from the dirty business, European consumers can conveniently place orders online and have cocaine delivered to their doorsteps within an hour.
The book is a collaboration with Colombian artist Juan Arreaza, whose paintings weave another visual voice and layer into the work. In his expressive oil paintings, Arreaza draws on his observations of nightlife across Europe and the United States, where young people party on the very substance that is devastating his homeland. And using chemicals sourced from cocaine laboratories, Arreaza portrays a gallery of powerful and historical figures who shaped the drug trade and its wars.
A series of commissioned essays are included in the book. These are by Santiago Rivas, a host of cultural and political podcasts in Colombia; María Jimena Duzán, a prominent Colombian journalist and political scientist; Professor Henrik Vigh, a Danish anthropologist and director of the Centre for Global Criminology at the University of Copenhagen and Luis Chaparro, a leading Mexican American journalist investigating organised crime.
The book presents a distinctive photographic body of work that explores the human consequences of global cocaine consumption, with unprecedented access and insight into producers, smugglers, law enforcement and organized criminal groups across the borders.
Through its intimate and multi-layered visual language, Sangre Blanca invites reflection on contemporary conditions such as escapism, hedonism, global inequality, and neocolonialism—while confronting the enduring question of user responsibility and the very nature of the war on drugs.
