EAST-SIDE HEROINES

Gripping portraits of female addicts put a human face on the rising
toll of drug deaths

Much Music's Muchwest program will focus tonight on the heroin
epidemic plaguing Vancouver's downtown east side, premiering two music
videos by local singer-songwriters.

Both videos feature gripping portraits by Lincoln Clarkes, a Vancouver
photographer who has spent the last two years compiling tributes to
the lives of "Heroines" - female addicts whose faces are the human
side of a story usually told in terms of overdose statistics.

The statistics themselves are grim. During the three months of this
year, 87 people in B.C. died from drug overdoses, up from 67 during
the same period last year.

Seen here are four of the more than 350 women Clarkes has photographed
within a five-block radius of Main and Hastings. He has no titles for
the images and doesn't feel comfortable identifying the women or
their circumstances.

"I have 101 reasons why I started this project," he told The Province.
"It's so important that these women and their plight is
documented."

The videos - which will air at 7 p.m. and midnight - were created by
students at Emily Carr after Clarkes gave a presentation of his
pictures. The two songs were written by Kat Kosiancic and Suzanne Wilson.

Clarke describes his work as "social documentary". The portraits were
all taken in gritty black and white and the subjects look directly
into the camera.

"We see the problem from a distance, we hear about it - but we don't
usually look into the faces of the statistics," says Clarkes. "These
photographs force people to look into the eyes of the women."