Every city has a shadow. Every town has a Drake. For four years Tamara Reynolds immersed herself in the lives of the people existing just above survival on one square block in the shadows of the Drake Motel in Nashville, Tennessee. Although the historic motel has a storied past with rumoured visits by Elvis Presley and as a popular location for film shoots with stars such as River Phoenix and Dolly Parton, in The Drake Reynolds turns her lens on those less known living with addiction on the margins of society. “I’ve been sober since 2002, and I recognized the despair, the lie you tell yourself that keeps you in the cycle of addiction,” Reynolds says. “How you keep lowering the bar to hold on to that one thing you believe is keeping you alive but it’s actually killing you. The specificity of the subject allowed me to delve deeply into a world that was far removed from my own life yet perilously close had I not found recovery. ”