In the Shadow of the Vampire: Reflections from the World of Anne Rice

Anne Rice has single-handedly re-popularized the vampire genre for a massive international audience of every age and social class. In The Shadow Of The Vampire offers a close up view of her devotees and disciples, fangs and all. Over 100 photographs from Anne Rice's Memnoch Ball in New Orleans as well as other events serve as a portrait of this growing subculture.
The photographs illustrate the themes the readers relate to in their fantasies and everyday lives and the extremes to which they will go to be close to their mentor. The subjects of the photographs, the fans themselves, explain in accompanying interviews their spiritual relationships to romance, eroticism, loneliness, bloodlust or outsider status of the characters in the book. From the people who sleep in coffins to the teenage Goth-rockers to the HIV-positive man who found a deep allegorical comfort in the vampire Lestat, their responses range from the burlesque to the sublime.

This is an intriguing concept for a book of photo interviews. But then, award-winning documentary photographer Jana Marcus has always been drawn to the fringe; And one of her earlier collections was entitled Midnight in Manhattan: A Decade of Subcultures and the Alternative Scene. In the Shadow of the Vampire, her first book, assembles portraits of and interviews with the devotees and disciples of the Queen of Vampirism herself, Anne Rice. And who are these people? Office administrators, translators, shop owners, students, and the more flamboyant (blood drinkers, S&M'ers, role-playing gamers).

"Her books allow people to think about their place in society and identify their feelings through her characters' exploration of unconventional lifestyles," she opines. "It is extraordinary how many people I've spoken to who had never read a book before they read an Anne Rice novel." Ever think of Anne Rice as an inadvertent champion of literacy? As may be expected, the reflections are a mixture of the banal and the more thought-provoking. The phenomenon of Anne Rice's celebrity is after all--well, phenomenal. The enormity of her appeal has given birth to the annual Gathering of The Coven Ball in New Orleans, movies, an Anne Rice tour company, a perfume line, a Lestat wine, and T-shirts emblazoned with an MRI of Rice's brain. And if all that leaves you colder than sleeping alone in a casket, then you might want to pick up a copy for great tips on wardrobe and make-up.