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A boy clowning around on a basketball court in a Colombian cocaine corridor: Mads Nissen’s best photograph

‘I took this in 2017, when Didiller was nine. A few years ago, I returned to the area and asked about him, but couldn’t find him. Someone told me he had been killed’ I fell in love with photography when I was 19, while studying Spanish and doing voluntary work in Venezuela. Having grown up in the quite boring countryside of Denmark, I was curious about the rest of the world and had become socially and politically engaged. Walking down a street in Mérida with an old camera in my hand, I realised this was the perfect medium to push for the values I believed in, to try to make a change in the world. This was when I also became fascinated by the neighbouring country of Colombia, where civil war was causing great instability. I would later travel there for a project about the Amazon rainforest, and in 2016 I was commissioned by the Nobel Peace Center to cover the final stages of the peace pro

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Why it mattersTechnology

‘I took this in 2017, when Didiller was nine. A few years ago, I returned to the area and asked about him, but couldn’t find him. Someone told me he had been killed’ I fell in love with photography when I was 19, while studying Spanish and doing voluntary work in Venezuela. Having grown up in the quite boring countryside of Denmark, I was curious about the rest of the world and had become socially and politically engaged. Walking down a street in Mérida with an old camera in my hand, I realised this was the perfect medium to push for the values I believed in, to try to make a change in the world. This was when I also became fascinated by the neighbouring country of Colombia, where civil war was causing great instability. I would later travel there for a project about the Amazon rainforest, and in 2016 I was commissioned by the Nobel Peace Center to cover the final stages of the peace pro

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What happened

According to The Guardian, A boy clowning around on a basketball court in a Colombian cocaine corridor: Mads Nissen’s best photograph reports that ‘I took this in 2017, when Didiller was nine. A few years ago, I returned to the area and asked about him, but couldn’t find him. Someone told me he had been killed’ I fell in love with photography when I was 19, while studying Spanish and doing voluntary work in Venezuela. Having grown up in the quite boring countryside of Denmark, I was curious about the rest of the world and had become socially and politically engaged. Walking down a street in Mérida with an old camera in my hand, I realised this was the perfect medium to push for the values I believed in, to try to make a change in the world. This was when I also became fascinated by the neighbouring country of Colombia, where civil war was causing great instability. I would later travel there for a project about the Amazon rainforest, and in 2016 I was commissioned by the Nobel Peace Center to cover the final stages of the peace pro

Context

The development is part of VINI’s Technology coverage for readers following technology, science, product policy, markets, infrastructure, and the public consequences of innovation. The original report is linked so readers can check the publisher’s account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The original report is dated 2026-07-01T14:00:37+00:00.

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Original report: A boy clowning around on a basketball court in a Colombian cocaine corridor: Mads Nissen’s best photograph via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the report; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.

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