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How should society recognize and remember its most dreadful events? Province reporter Salim Jiwa has written two books about the two Air India terrorist bombings in 1985, one of which ripped open a jumbo jet from Vancouver over the Irish Sea, murdering 329 people. Journalists Damian Inwood and Jon Ferry wrote The Olson Murders (1982) and Ian Mulgrew provided Final Payoff: The True Price of Convicting Clifford Robert Olson (1990).

For years, Vancouver Mayor Philip Owen and the police board failed to recognize that a serial killer could be responsible for the spate of missing women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. To ensure society didn't "invisibilize" such women again, Lincoln Clarkes published photos of their peers. His controversial black-and-white album of marginalized women posing in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Heroines (2002), is arguably one of the most timely, necessary and respectful books ever published in B.C.

A resident of the Downtown Eastside, Clarkes is a professional photographer who began in 1996 to take photos of the women he met in his neighborhood, many of whom were prostitutes or drug addicts. By treating his subjects with the same respect he would accord Sharon Stone, one of his movie business clients, he assembled a photographic documentary that served as the basis for an award-winning documentary film with original poetry read by Susan Musgrave. Heroines: A Photographic Obsession opened the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival and has been shown nationally in Canada. The art exhibit and documentary film led to the publication of Heroines, the book, with commentaries from author Barbara Hodgson, social advocate Elaine Allan, 20th-century photo collector Patricia Canning and art curator Ken Dietrich-Campbell. In 2003, Heroines was named co-winner of the Vancouver Book Award for best book about the city.

The barbaric murders of women associated with the pig farm managed by Robert Picton and his brother have been documented by various journalists, and Maggie de Vries wrote Missing Sarah (2003) after Vancouver police gave her the news in 2002 that a sample of her younger sister Sarah's DNA (from a tooth) had been found on the Port Coquitlam property of Robert Pickton, the accused (and later convicted) serial killer of Vancouver prostitutes. Maggie de Vries's 28-year-old sister had vanished from the corner of Princess and Hastings on April 14, 1998. Maggie de Vries' heart-rending memoir won both the first annual George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in B.C. Literature and the 13th annual VanCity Book Prize for women's issues.

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Beautiful women on bicycles in downtown traffic, many wearing short skirts, comprise the first two-thirds of Lincoln Clarkes' Cyclists (Quattro 2013 $35), followed by less conspicuous gents. These are fashionable, beguiling portraits from Toronto that are presented as "stolen public moments given back to us as art & history." It's less controversial than Clarkes' stunning and brave Vancouver-based predecessor Heroines (Anvil 2002) but no less timely.

Lincoln Clarkes' Heroines is a black & white photographic documentary of the marginalized women of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. It is one of the most timely, necessary and respectful books ever published in British Columbia.

Born in Toronto in 1957, Lincoln Clarkes came to Vancouver as a teenager. Originally a painter, he taught himself photography and now works successfully in fashion and portraiture. As a resident of the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver, he began in 1996 to take black & white photos of the women he met in his neighborhood, many of whom were prostitutes and/or drug addicts. By treating his subjects with the same respect he would accord Sharon Stone, one of his movie business clients, he assembled a photographic documentary that served as the basis for an award-winning documentary film from Peach Arch Entertainment. With original poetry read by Susan Musgrave, Heroines: A Photographic Obsession opened the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival and has been shown nationally in Canada. The art exhibit and documentary film led to the publication of Heroines with commentaries from author Barbara Hodgson, social advocate Elaine Allan, 20th-century photo collector Patricia Canning and art curator Ken Dietrich-Campbell. In 2003, it was named co-winner of the Vancouver Book Award for best book about the city.

Heroines Revisited (Anvil $48) is a follow-up volume to Heroines: Photographs that features over 200 portraits, many not shown before, along with three new critical essays about the photo project and the controversial body of work, as well as an interview with the artist.

BOOKS:

Heroines: Photographs by Lincoln Clarkes (Anvil Press, 2002)
$29 can / $20 us | ISBN 1-895636-45-0 | 7 x 6.25 | 152 pages, paper

Heroines Revisited (Anvil, 2021) $48 978-1-77214-071-2 | 8.75 x 10.75 | 272 pages, paper

[BCBW 2022]

Heroines Revisited by Lincoln Clarkes
(Anvil $48)

In the late 1990s, Lincoln Clarkes, who had made his name as a fashion and celebrity photographer, began taking photographs of drug-addicted women working in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), which is where he resided as well. In 2002, he published some of the images in his book Heroines: Photographs (Anvil, 2002), exhibited the images at a DTES art gallery and was the subject of an award-winning documentary.

A furor of opinion erupted questioning Clarkes’ subject matter. It was also a time when the public and police departments began to take seriously the increasing reports of women on the DTES going missing. Clarkes’ photos were used in ‘missing posters.’ Later, a serial killer was convicted of some of the DTES murders.

Heroines Revisited is a follow-up volume featuring over 200 portraits, many not shown before. Accompanying the photographs is an interview with Clarkes and three essays that analyze the context of the controversial body of work.
According to journalist and scholar Melora Koepke, one of the essayists, objections to Heroines fall into two camps.

“First, there were commentators who disliked them on the grounds of civic pride or other kinds of calls to ‘decency,’ wherein they felt the photographs showed things and people that shouldn’t be seen,” she writes. “These subjects, it was implied and sometimes overtly stated, were not living their best lives and thus should not have their pictures taken … The second set of objections centred on the artist and his right to photograph these women. Clarkes—a white man, a professional artist—wasn’t ‘one of them,’ and should not be allowed to represent them.”

Koepke concludes that by its very existence, “Heroines asks whether those who are scandalized by what the photographs show should instead save their indignation for the conditions of life in the DTES.”

In his interview with journalist theresa norris, clarkes said each woman’s decision to model for him was a combination of her desires and her needs, and that was sufficient for his ethics. “What makes any woman, any person, want to be photographed?” Clarkes continued. “Some of them think they’re beautiful, and they are. In many cases, they came to me and asked to be in the series … If anything, it’s that they want to be recorded. Because they know they might not be here tomorrow.”

Of his technique, Clarkes said: “Eye contact was important to me. It was confrontational and almost like a dare, like a close-up they had been waiting for. I sometimes thought [they] stared into the camera so that all those people who will never know them, who hit the gas and lock their doors when they drive around here could know [the DTES women] in a way … they never would otherwise.”

When asked what he was most proud of as well as what had given him pain, Clarkes replied, “The pictured women’s involvement and collaboration were welcome and appreciated. They were into it all the way, helping me find and photograph other women on the street for the project … I orchestrated a group effort with an idea. It snowballed into awareness that led to help and an investigation. That was rewarding … The pain would be that there are hundreds of other women and girls that filled their shoes once my subjects went missing or died. Nowadays is worse than ever. It’s like a jetliner crashed on East Hastings.”
9781772140712

(BCBW 2022)