Photo Essay: Canada's Poorest Postal Code

This is a continuing photographic series, consisting of hundreds of color slides, (circa 1999) by renowned photographer Lincoln Clarkes. Entitled As Is, it captures the extreme tragedy and texture in the epicenter of Canada's heroin ghetto in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

The images speak volumes about the daily struggle that characterizes every street in the neighborhood from which over 60 women have gone missing. The DNA of many of these women were later discovered at the now-infamous Pickton farm, 30 kilometers East of Vancouver.

Lincoln Clarkes' acclaimed series entitled Heroines(Anvil Press), which the London Observer calls "beauty in a beastly place," consists of over 400 hundred portraits of Vancouver's addicted women. Some of the women he befriended and immortalized on film were later counted among alleged serial killer Robert Pickton's victims.

It has been written (LA Times Sunday Magazine) that Lincoln Clarkes' unsettling photographs reveal grace in the most unlikely places. His images are an emotional testament to that statement.