Pubdate: Thu, 25 Mar 1999
Source: Reuters
Copyright: 1999 Reuters Limited.
Author: Leah Eichler 

FEATURE-CANADIAN PHOTOGRAPHER ZOOMS IN ON HEROIN HELL

VANCOUVER, March 25 (Reuters) - A Canadian photographer accustomed to
shooting beautiful women and celebrities such as Noam Chomsky, Oliver Stone
and Sarah McLachlan has become
intoxicated with a subject that gives new meaning to the phrase
"heroin chic."

Lincoln Clarkes, 41, is training his lens on the women of Canada's
worst drug ghetto, East Hastings Street in Vancouver, eight city
blocks of heroin and  crack users, prostitutes and pimps and urban
decay unmatched anywhere in the  country.

Clarkes regularly drives his beat-up truck with broken windows several
blocks from his studio, past a Chinese elementary school surrounded by
a 10- foot (3 metre)-high fence, into the heart of heroin hell.

The transition from photographing models to drugged-out prostitutes
whose heroin-tracked arms have welts the size of dollar coins was in
some ways a natural progression for him.

"I am always photographing women, women are always my clients. Women
always love to have their photograph taken," Clarkes told Reuters,
adding that he believes every woman deserves a beautiful photo of herself.

"I was doing assignments for people, shooting all kinds of things, CD
covers, portraits. But this assignment I assigned myself just because
I thought it was important to shoot these woman, and I decided to do a
photographic essay  of this epidemic that is going on just down the
street."

Clarkes has been working for a year on his project, called "Heroines:
Portraits of Women on the Downtown Eastside," a play on the words heroin
and  heroine. But his involvement long ago went beyond merely taking photos.

PHOTOS HIGHLIGHT INNER STRENGTH AND DEFIANCE

He talks with his subjects and pays them $5 each for their time, and
some have doubled as his assistants in other photo shoots. He returns
later in the week and gives his models glossy black-and-white prints
of themselves that highlight their inner strength, sense of survival
and defiance.

Drugged-out women often chase Clarkes down the street, calling him by
name and imploring him to take their photos after they have tamed
their unruly hair and coloured their lips with randomly found makeup,
staring into broken mirrors.

Clarkes remains adamant about using only women in this project, saying
men are more dangerous and suspicious. "It's like the Titanic, the way
I look at it. It's sinking and you have to save the women and children
first."

Clarkes, who has photographed many celebrities including Deborah
Harry, lead singer of Blondie, LSD guru Timothy Leary, and
award-winning photographer Helmut Newton, treats his street women like
stars. The black-and-white photos are taken with a Rolleiflex camera
and he offers them his undivided attention.

"I try to make them look as fabulous as possible even though a lot of
times they are completely heroin sick, they can hardly stand up, they
can hardly walk," he said.

He has little hope for most of them. If days go by without seeing one,
he assumes she is dead. Most attempt suicide frequently, he says, and
one photo shows a young woman sobbing after she has shot $60 worth of
heroin -- with money acquired from prostitution -- in a failed attempt
to kill herself.

WOMEN ADDICTS 'TOTALLY SUICIDAL'

"They are totally suicidal, they are trying to overdose. I mean, a lot
of them are just on a kamikaze mission, they don't care. And in the

'90s if someone wants to kill themselves they overdose on heroin. It's
the way to go."

His commitment to these women has left Clarkes to some degree
emotionally and financially crippled. The day he escorted a Reuters
reporter down Vancouver's forgotten streets Clarkes left $40 behind,
and not a photo was snapped.

Although he insists he is not their saviour, he has thrown Christmas
parties and a Valentine's Day buffet for the women. He brings them
gifts of fruit and juice, but more importantly, he brings himself.

"I am totally addicted to these women. I love photographing these
woman, meeting them and talking to them and hearing their stories," he
said. "I think they are really salt-of-the-earth women and they are
real tragedies and they are walking around without any crutches."

Most of the women -- Clarkes estimates 90 percent of those he has
talked with -- were abused before ending up on East Hastings Street.
"They use the heroin, the cocaine, as a medication to kill the pain of
the abuse they have  gone through in their earlier life," he said.

"In the '60s and '70s, drugs were fun, it was exciting, it was
explorative.  We used drugs as a way to explore our minds and have
fun. It was like tickets  to the circus. But there's drugs for
entertainment and there is heroin to kill  the pain."

'HER ARMS WERE LIKE A ROAD MAP'

Clarkes recalls photographing a woman on Christmas Day and asking if
she had called her parents to wish them a happy holiday. She replied
matter-of-factly that her father had stabbed her mother 28 times
before jumping off a balcony. Her mother survived the attack, but she
got HIV from a tainted blood transfusion and died recently.

When Clarkes, in an attempt to change the subject, asked the woman if
she had children, she replied that she had two from an ex-boyfriend of
her mother.

"She hadn't eaten in three days. I bought her dinner. Her arms were
like a road map. Her feet were so swollen and wet that she couldn't
stand up. You know, Merry Christmas," he said with a sardonic smile.

Back home, Clarkes flips through his portfolio and repeats the
insights he has acquired in Canada's heroin hell. "Look at this woman
here," he said, pointing to a woman sitting on a curb with an apple
that Clarkes had given her resting on the pavement along with a
lighted cigarette and her crack pipe.

"These are the steps of this heroin ghetto," he said of the curb,
"where people are dying and vomiting and pissing and s---ting and f---ing."

Clarkes does with a camera what many others failed to do with millions
of dollars in social services. He captures the other side of these
walking statistics to show women with aspirations, women who want out
of their Hastings Street hell.

"These woman are really tack sharp, witty, funny, totally romantic.
Sure, they've got romantic hopes and dreams. They'll crack a joke down
there. They're dying, but they're also laughing."

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MAP posted-by: Rich O'Grady