Lincoln Clarkes is a local photographer of renown that I don’t happen to run into often. I first met him in the very early 80s when he was a painter and I was assigned by Vancouver Magazine to photograph him. I did not know too much about photographic techniques but I did use an extremely sharp film called Kodak S0115 which was the precursor of perhaps the sharpest film ever made, Kodak Technical Pan. I have no idea if I used a light. I do know that Clarkes was gracious and faced my camera with a smile.

In the years since, once he became a photographer, I would run into him and I would note that he was always elegantly dressed and accompanied by a or many beautiful women. He has a sense of style. When Clarkes picks up a camera an puts it in front of his eye (he does have two) it is elegance personified.

Some years ago Clarkes gave me a print that he took in London of Helmut Newton. I would believe that both Clarkes and I adored the man. I have a memory of a photograph of an undraped Elizabeth Mazzoni by the bank vault in the building then owned by Uno Langmann. It was exquisite and much in Newton’s style.

From there Clarkes went to more serious and perhaps even controversial themes. But I was glad that recently Clarkes took it upon himself to photograph women riding bicycles in skirts. As we would have said back in his time as a painter, “right on!”