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.
click to view the complete set of images in the archive
InstituteTM (collectively Institute Pictures, Institute Studios, & Institute Artist) is redefining how stories are produced and told in the 21st Century. Founded by Producer Frank Evers and Director/Visual Artist Lauren Greenfield, we are a multiplatform production company representing auteur-driven storytellers across commercials, photography, fine art, film, and technology — and producing original work across every screen that those stories live on. Our multiplatform expertise and established global relationships in entertainment, commercial, fine art, and journalism create unmatched reach and cross-pollination of creative work. A film commission informs a photography campaign; a fine art practice shapes a commercial; an editorial relationship opens a documentary. Few companies operate fluently across all of these worlds. Institute was built this way from the ground up.
Clients include: Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft/Xbox, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Nike, Adidas, Lululemon, Under Armour, Dove, Maybelline, Clinique, Ulta Beauty, Aesop, Vaseline, LEGO, Balenciaga, Dior, Tom Ford, Kenzo, Supreme, Van Cleef & Arpels, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Toyota, McLaren, Pennzoil, American Express, Chase, U.S. Bank, Burger King, Chobani, Corona, Pepsi, Nespresso, Lavazza, Velveeta, Airbnb, Four Seasons, Marriott, Instacart, eBay, JCPenney, Levi's, Swatch, Bang & Olufsen, Bayer, Pfizer, Genentech, EA, Planned Parenthood, Ad Council, and the United Nations. Editorial and publishing partners include: The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, TIME, Bloomberg, National Geographic, The Economist, Monocle, Le Monde, Stern, Sunday Times Magazine, Phaidon, Steidl, Abrams, Prestel, Chronicle, and Random House.
“Institute” is a registered trademark in the US, Europe, and United Kingdom. All rights reserved.
