The Cracked
© Gui ChristCrack-cocaine became popular in Brazil during the '80s and after almost 40 years it was considered an epidemic with over 2 million users in the country.
In São Paulo, the Brazilian economic capital is located the biggest street drugs market in the world, “Crackland”. Due to decades of the economic crisis in Brazil, what used to be fancy houses built for the richest families in the country, are now turned into tenements or crack-houses and on its streets, almost 3.000 people walk every day seeking drugs.
Due to the crack’s high psychoactive effects and the area's urbanistic situation, the Crackland became the most feared block in the city, and its population was considered a threat by the local society, a kind of a pariah caste, called "The Cracked”.
On 2017 the local municipality started a new project to rebuild the area and remove the Cracked, which resulted in many conflicts and police violent actions. Since then photographer Gui Christ has been regularly visiting the place where he built a small studio to offer free photos for documents in exchange of making small interviews creating a visual record of this invisible, but also feared population.
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