Within The Infinite Ashes The Latex Will Reign

The land of Ashes lays somewhere between a big ocean and a steep mountain. The world’s only town lies there, composed from the vastness of small houses. They are made from wood and colored glass and are built wall to wall so that nobody feels left out. The streets are very narrow. Walking around the city feels like going through a large labyrinth. While squeezing through endless facades one can get a glimpse of the inside — blankets covering floors and walls and visible heatwave coming from the fireplace. Mesmerized by the infinite lights one wanders. It is hard not to get lost. The town of Ashes is inhabited by ghouls, who have been there since the dawn of time. They were never born and so they will never die. They are tall and slender, and their hair is dark, long, and shiny, almost as if they were born from willow trees. Their skin is a little transparent. Like a window on a cold day, steamy from the inside’s warmth.^♱

All of them love sex. Their desire for sexual pleasure gives them life. They feed on vital juices and those come only from sexual intercourse. Ghouls love it in every possible way — alone, in pairs, in groups. There is lust in the air. Strolling through the narrow streets, one has to squeeze through sweaty, hot bodies arranged in different kinds of combinations. On the pavements, at the walls, in the windows, on the windows, inside of the houses. It’s impossible to not be stopped or stop and not to be lost in the desire. In the world of the Ashes, even though there are dicks and vaginas, they exist only as body parts. Having one or another never determined anything.The imagination of the Ghouls is infinite and as old as time, and nobody ever gave a second thought to dicks and vaginas. Ghouls are an extremely loving and caring community. They cannot get pregnant, since they were never born in the first place, so their care is placed within their already existing relationships.^♱♱

^♱ On 25th of October 2015 parliamentary elections in Poland ended with the victory of the Law and Justice party.¹ The party promised improvement of the quality of life and general change in approach, which met the demands of society at that time. Over the years the new government was implementing a lot of changes, the core was mostly to elevate the importance of family and religion. This rise of religious influences made the Church an inseparable institution of decision making. Over the years the conservative, ruling party became direct and violent towards any oppositionists, getting radical in its misogynist, racist, homophobic and xenophobic narration. Immigrants, women, and LGBTQIA+ people were treated all together as a threat to the country’s future. Radical new laws implemented over these groups became a start to the enormous, political war inside of the country to fight together for equal rights and a brighter future. Vampires are those who have always been there. They are the people who have been pushed out from society, due to their different behaviors of physical features, which were outside of societal norms. In Poland, everyone who stands in opposition to the government’s ideology is treated either with hate, negligence or violence.

^♱♱ Vampires both attract and repel people. It is a response to the fear of death and the horror of the decay of the human body. Vampire also appears in a sexual dimension. A reference comes from a Polish theorist Maria Janion. It is an expression of hidden sexual desires and fantasies, in particular those stigmatized by social sexual norms such as homosexuality or BDSM practices. The vampire represents what is forbidden, standing in opposition to Christian beliefs. Its habit of drinking blood, which is to ensure his earthly immortality, is a reversal of the meanings of the sacrament of the Eucharist.²

One night in the smallest house of the town, one of the Ghouls named Apolonia was looking at themself in the mirror. They noticed something just next to the surface of their belly. A black dot, just as big as a thumbnail. Scared by their body changing, Apolonia locked themself inside of their home. It was not an embarrassing situation. They felt the urge to explore what was coming next. The days passed in isolation. They pleasured themselves all day, sang songs, and worried all the time. Day by day the fleck grew bigger and bigger. They felt drained and weak. Like any other, they needed to feed, and so they went out. While they were strolling on the street some of their fellow creatures started to notice. Their looks were surprised, curious. Some stopped to ask. A second later there was a big crowd surrounding Apolonia, everyone wanting to ask and touch their belly. Soon everyone from the whole town gathered around them.

Ghouls never wore any clothes. As a community, they never experienced anything like shame. Some of them were shy, but that always came from respect for others, and not from the feeling of being judged. Their bodies were all different but never objectified. This was a first time they’ve seen a body growing inside of another. They never experienced anything similar. An abstraction with no precedent. Ghouls never had problems with communication. Obvious truths were instilled inside each one of them and have never been broken.

Some people started to talk. First silently in the background, and then as more and more voices joined the conversation, the tension began to grow. The massive cacophony of voices turned into a heated fight. The scream was so unbearable to Apolonia, that they started to crawl on their knees through the crowd, experiencing fear for the very first time. They barely made it a few meters into the crowd, when they suddenly felt that they were being pulled away from the ground. Keep it! Miracle! Stop it! Keep it! Keep it! Stop it! Miracle! Harm! Keep it! Keep it! Stop it! Keep it! Miracle! Stop it! Keep it! Keep it! Stop it! Miracle! Harm! Keep it! Keep it! Stop it! Harm! Harm! Harm! And a miracle happened. The thing inside of Apolonia’s belly moved and suddenly the land of Ashes experienced a shift of power like never before. The Ghouls began arguing and split into two groups. One group wanted the thing to be taken out instantly, to make sure that it will cause no harm, while the other wanted to keep it and see how it evolves. The move from words to deeds came shortly. Instead of kissing, they started to kick, slap and beat the others. Few Ghouls grabbed Apolonia with force, and just before anybody knew it they were gone. They took them to one of the small houses. They guarded the place during the days and nights.^♱

They were weak. First, impossible heat started to almost melt their skin. It was like volcanic lava sliming all over their body. Their eyes were barely open, shocked by the intensity of the light Apolonia couldn't see anything else than the inside. It stopped moving. Before there was some floating, the pressure — now only emptiness. They were lying like this, holding the belly tight with barely conscious hands. The time stretched in a feverish sweat. Guards saw them throwing up and shaking and couldn't help. No other ghoul ever saw something like this in their lives. All they did was watch Apolonia's slow melt into subconsciousness. Their eyes closed forever. The body became cold and as volcanic lava froze in nothingness. The first Ghoul in history died that day. The town lived on in silence. Half of it didn’t even know what happened, while the other half just wondered in silence. A hostile takeover became a disappearance. Who knew, stayed shut.^♱♱

^♱ In 2016 there were two bills submitted to the lower house of parliament. The first one called "Stop Abortion" tightens the abortion law, providing for imprisonment of illegal abortion both for the person doctor and the mother. The second one called "Let’s Save Women" was submitted as a response, which supports unlimited abortion until the end of the 12th week of pregnancy. The first bill against freedom of choice was submitted for further consideration while the other bill immediately rejected after the first reading. People in many cities across the country went in the streets to demonstrate, which ended up in rejecting the "Stop Abortion" bill. Nationwide dispute over abortion was not over though.

On 22nd of October 2020 the Constitutional Court ruled that it is illegal to terminate the pregnancy even if the fetus is in a high probability of severe and irreversible impairment. That meant that pregnant women who had previously undergo a medical process of allowing for termination of pregnancy due to severe damage to the fetus, were enable to do that.³ The scale of enormous demonstrations was widespread in international media which supported Polish women in the fight for their rights. Regime television in Poland condemned the protests while compared strike’s symbol of lightning to WW2 nazi symbol SS.

That was an exceptionally emotional moment for the people. I was witnessing the fight for the freedom of choice, trying to break free from the constant control of men. Extraordinary solidarity among Polish people showed how much love they have for each other. An expression "You will never walk alone again" became a Poland-wide slogan standing for empathy and support.

^♱♱ Year 2020 was also a year of the deepened anti-LGBT+ actions. The ruling party of the Law and Justice was coming through an image crisis. The promised wealth clashed with reality where hundreds of thousands of people lost their jobs and the national health service was hardly making ends meet. Instead of fixing already existing problems the ruling party created a new one to make a diversion. Still ongoing narrative is mostly based on alleged attack of LGBT+ people on "family" values.⁴

"Let’s defend families from this kind of corruption, depravity, absolutely immoral behavior, let’s defend them from the LGBT ideology, and let's stop listening to these idiocy about some human rights or someones’ equality. These people are not equal to normal people, and let's end this discussion. Let's end the discussion of these LGBT abominations, homosexuality, bisexuality, parades. Let’s defend the family, because the lack of defense of the family leads us to what you see now." said the party member Przemysław Czarnek who also soon later became a Minister of Education. Polish President Andrzej Duda only supported those statements and referred to a neo-bolshevism movement. "They try to tell us that these are people, while in fact it’s only ideology" said in a public speech.⁵

The move from words to deeds came shortly. There were many cases of public call out, death threats, abuse, beating, stone throwing and arson. Actions were also coming from families of people identifying as part of LGBT+ community, which resulted in many struggling from depression or suicidal thoughts.⁶ This radical tactic of disrespect and dehumanization results in real tragedies which we witness even more often today.

After the incident, the town of Ashes was trying to function again. Streets became full again, filled with hot bodies. Everyone seemed to be enjoying liquefied love and soft moans. A new feeling was floating in the air, like a curse. Ghostly unrest. It was hard to fully lose themselves in pleasures when those little tingles of remorse were coming out of nowhere. Not much later some more Ghouls started to notice changes in their bodies. Already as a collective, they knew that it was better to not show their bellies to anyone. Exhaustion, dying alone. Like a plague, one after another. One Ghoul was stronger than the others and their pregnancy was keeping itself like never before. They were carrying the creature inside of them as if it had no weight. Summoned by loud clamor, everyone gathered in and around the hut to witness the wonder. Finally, they gave birth to the first-ever-born creature. Not differently from the other, the ghoul died.

From the first glance a slimy, little newborn looked differently. Its skin was thick and opaque. There was no hair. The baby was so small that it could fit into a palm of a hand. It had big eyes full of innocence. Just one look was completely disarming. At this point, all the creatures felt like themselves again. Polite, respectful, and joyful. They just saw impossible beauty and understood something more than anything else — they understood protection.

As years passed, differences started to shape more clearly. Human - that's what the first-ever-born have called itself. The human had dense skin, slightly porous. From its first years, it got the attention of the entire community. Because of its differences, it was always at the center of attention. Although always there, Ghouls from the community didn't feel any lust for it whatsoever. Somehow they treated it with different kinds of care. The human didn’t feel any lust for them either. Raised by the whole town, the human slowly started to notice his otherness. He was the only one born in the whole universe. The idea that a body could come from a body was something that he thought about quite often. It seemed a little ugly, like it never should have existed in the first place. His body was changing and it was different from the rest of the bodies around him. He was the only one not feeding on vital juices. He developed a natural craving for other things like sadness and grief. He also loved to chew on little grains of pity that grew around.

When he grew up, the miracle child became a ruler of the town. For the first time in history, the town of Ashes had a leader. Nobody protested. Mesmerized by the marvelousness of the human they built him the biggest house. The house was made not only from wood and colored glass, but from every kind of wood that could be found in the valley and every color of glass that could be produced. They made stained glass windows with depictions of the finest come-together in history. Since it was the biggest house, it became the place for activities when it was too cold outside. It could fit hundreds of bodies. The human usually spent time by himself. Walking or just spending time in his bed. He never joined the crowd.

He never experienced skin-to-skin contact with another living being, and so he could never feel warmth. Depleted by the lack of another's heat he made himself a piece of clothing. It was a long piece of harsh fabric, made in the same way as a carpet. It was as simple as it could be, just enough to be able to hide and warm himself. The longer he wore the clothing the more he started to feel disturbed by the nakedness of others. One day he just quietly took all of his things and before the sun rose, he was gone.

After years of deep sleep, a gigantic volcano awakened. Immense eruptions shot a massive amount of thick ash into the air. Heavy clouds covered the land and the seas creating a soft, infinite featherbed. Chocked on powdery air, the town of Ashes went silent. Hidden in their homes ghouls counted days. Light didn’t come through for some time. Plants died in a lack of sunlight and extreme cold which came as a consequence of the explosion. The once burning hot lava now became solid. The changed landscape looked like it was there always — untouched and pristine.^♱

The streets of Ashes were almost empty. Sad silhouettes were sneaking by quickly. The new world seemed hard to adapt to. They wore long black coats, as protection from the sunlight. The light hadn't been seen for so long that any stroke of it could harm their newly adapted skins. Skin which became sick. Deprived of oxygen and nourishment it sagged and crinkled. Hungry Ghouls were looking for vital juices which could not be found anymore. They lost their ability to give and feel pleasure. The hypnotic sky, in the color of blood, made them crave for more. They wanted something hot, thick, and mouth-filling. Adapted to the new conditions, Ghouls developed stronger teeth. A thick layer of old lava was only possible to be broken by sharp, long fangs. This way Ghouls could crack the surface and extract water, herbs, and other things they used to have access to before the eruption.It didn’t take long for the flora to rot under the surface. Like some kind of spell, coming from the clouds, Ashians started to sink their teeth into each other. This new vital juice was as hot and thick as they wanted. It was also pounding from their bodies like gigantic waterfalls. From head to toes, from bends to folds to gaps. This new way of feasting woke up their desire for pleasure and opened doors for new sensations. Vital juices turned bloody and as tasty as the blood coming straight from under the skin.^♱♱

All this happened underneath the black capes. The world was not as it used to be. Huts were emptied over time. Ghouls moved to the big house, which before the big eruption was a house of the human. He was nowhere to be seen. Living there all together made them feel closer to him and each other in this moment of chaos. It was a sad house. Big windows with glass pictures were looking from above. They needed sun which was barely there. Shy strokes were lightly coming through colorful snapshots of past happiness. They became bland as they forgot to shine how they used to. Slowly the light faded from the town of Ashes and left the city in eternal darkness.

^♱ After years of deep sleep, in 1815 volcano Tambora exploded. A gigantic eruption caused massive destruction on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. Worldwide consequences came next year as Europe became a place of snow, which caused death to crops and animals. People were dying of epidemics and hunger. The sky turned yellow and the snow was the color of old blood. There was a year with no summer. Never-ending rain stopped five young English friends from staying at the Geneva lake. They were bored and fascinated by the Swiss ghost stories. To fill the time they started to write scary stories. And just like that, taken from the stereotypic horror stories, two works were made: Frankenstein by Mary Godwin and Vampire by John William Polidori. Polidori’s vision was not picked up for many years as the topic of revenants was too extreme. After some years first adaptations were shown in Parisian theaters. It was just a matter of time for a vampire that we know today to be picked up and spread all over the world.⁷

^♱♱ Vampire also known as a blood-sucker is a symbol of disease - several clinical and psychosomatic ones - and itself a pathological image. It is a disturbing archetype that provides pathological both the female and the feminine. It divides male blood as good and female as bad. Almost as menstrual blood would have a sense of horror. That also completely leaves out all the other people who do menstruate and do not fit in the term "feminine". Quoting Marie Mulvey-Roberts: "Dracula can be read as an anti-menstrual text wherein menstruation is personified by the figure of the vampire. […] women and blood is a surrogate for menstrual taboo, which is also eroticized haemofetishism." This fetishism leaves the idea of some deeply hidden layer of what is unknown and the urge to control it. The Polish government’s urge to control and shame women might then come from a reinforcement of the Victorian conservative medical view that menstruation should be modified. "Taboo deals with the sociology of exclusion and, in this instance, has functioned as a means of protecting men from the dangers represented by menstruating women. […] startling similarities between vampires and menstruating women - both are condemned as unclean, agents of pollution, and instigators of corruption. […] A man could die from having contact, particularly intercourse, with a menstruating woman, while to make love with a vampire was potentially lethal." as Marie Mulvey-Roberts also writes.⁸

A person with menopause, the end of menstruation, was associated with a "masculine woman”. That was perceived as a threat to what is masculine - thus shifting traditional gender boundaries. Feminized men were of anxiety of society and evoke homophobic reactions (around XVIII and XIX century). Dracula is represented as a feminized man who smells maybe just like menstrual blood.⁹

Prostethic Silver Vampire Teeth

Teresa Graves as vampire in a wedding gown

On a cold morning, on the endless surface stood a human’s silhouette. He wears black leather, the same color as the ground. It has a yellow sign on the back, in the color of the sky. It resembles something that we know, something close to our subconsciousness that just tinkles and tries to break free. The human is not the only one. Up by the horizon, there are many like him. Ghouls were almost sure that their boy was lost or even dead after the volcano erupted. They didn't expect that the human would find his way out and prosper during the many years of darkness. Ashamed by his history he reclaimed his freedom and chose not to be them. Rejected by his oddness he became sour. He clearly remembers as he strolls through the streets and wherever he looks, his memory plays vivid scenes from the past. He could never forget the loneliness that he felt and become mad about it. Human World was then ruled by odd laws which could never be understood by ghouls. ^♱

He with the rest of his humanity took what was left in the town of Ashes. They settled down in Ashians’ homes, built new constructions, and created a new, better world. When they found out that the biggest house was still there, stained glass windows were taken down immediately, melted, and replaced. He couldn't help the reoccurring visions he was having every time he stepped through its doors. It was still his home and walls were continuously carrying euphoria. Ghouls were not let into the town. He let them live on the remains that humans couldn’t use anymore. His goal was to wipe out all the remains of previous inhabitants and erase the memory. Oblivion erases questions, especially about the past.

Ghouls became scary nightcrawlers. Rumors said they would attack at night to eat alive the human children. They raped women, men, and children. They couldn’t be trusted or tamed. The humans sat in the middle of the squares and told stories about their bloodcurdling encounters. More agile inhabitants used stories to make money. For just a few coins anyone could see a performance with the finest costumes, live music and get extraordinary shivers.^♱♱

^♱ After Polidori’s "The Vampyre" came out, people made it first into theater plays, later into movies, and everything that could be sold.¹⁰ A capitalized version of Vampire became a white character. It almost exclusively excluded People of Color from the industry, following the notion of a pale, white, European revenant with the modern example of "Twilight" or "Vampire Diaries". "Vampiria", starring Teresa Graves, was an attempt of creating a black-skinned character, which ended up in creating a narrative of racist practices.

^♱♱ Dehumanization aspect, which is a term used to describe the problem of vampirism, is also a widely used tactic of the Polish ruling party. It aims to brutalize people of otherness. A practice that was commonly used were trucks put into public space spreading disgraceful "facts". "Facts" without sources or any kind of confirmations were made up by the Pro- Law to Life Foundation. Slogans were written with big letters on the sides of these trucks accusing, as referred to, "homo-lobby" of teaching children at the age of four - masturbation, at the age of six - consenting to sex, and nine years old - of first sexual experiences and orgasms. In a successful attempt to take over public television, propaganda could also reach smaller towns and villages. At that time many cases of pedophilia in Church were publicly revealed. Regime television was brainwashing their viewers with not the priests being the abusers but gay people, as in their opinion all crimes had homosexual character.¹¹

Soon other individuals like sex educators were targeted. With the accusations of being pedophiles themselves they were banned from schools, which narrowed down the range of educational material basically to nothing. While the Church had a gigantic role in the whole process, the topic of vampires closes a circle. The fear of the unknown, the slander, and massive acts of oppression and violence were and are used to erase what is being uncomfortable for the regime.

Vampiria Magazine

Lil Nas X

^♱ While many are being ostracized from society are at the same time heavily sexualized. Mass media culture made a vampire a symbol of sex. Widely used by many rap artists creates a sense of duality within the hetero oriented hip-hop culture and liberated man appearances like Lancey Foux, Playboy Carti, or Lil Nas X. As if the two undergrounds meet somewhere in the middle creating a street-queer musical. Is the sexualized vampire a result of its capitalization and the act of exchanging bloody fluids represents a sexual act?

Sex sells and Hollywood sells the idea of a female character being bitten by usually male vampires. Female almost always being a victim of those representations creates even deeper inequalities in gendering the media, making a traditional, white, heterosexual, handsome man a seductive conversationalist with impenetrable confidence.

Lil Nas X in Rodeo

Little had humanity known about Ghouls’ life outside of the town. With no home and no shelter, they were forced to live on black, infinite stone. The power they held made them superior to humans. They were always so in love, so in passion, and in peace with themselves and everyone around them. Every place felt like home when they had each other. The stone was not a burden, maybe a slight dissatisfaction to already threatened bodies. Post volcanic acid rains eventually burned through their capes. They slept under the naked sky and they walked up to a thin layer of ash. It gathered everywhere and with no right tools, it was almost impossible to get rid of. Layers piled on each other day by day and with the help of the sun, turned into a shiny and sticky layer. Soon it became an elastic shell — black, shiny, leather-like.
The sun gives life but also reflects from the surface. The wearer is safe. This shield with its pure form provides freedom. Ghouls became transcendent. Able to stand upright and get back what was taken from them.^♱

A march of hundreds began in the cover of the night. Humans feared, shivering to the bone. They were never able to understand the power that Ghouls had. They could be anything and anyone. They never looked back. Never looked at anyone with judgment. Never feared. Feared nobody and loved everyone. Eternally in love with the idea of their community. Focused on collective growth. On happiness. On pleasure. Made to give pleasure. Made to kiss. Made to dance. Made to celebrate. To celebrate life. To take care of each other. To give space and to fill space. To express themselves. Through words, things and acts. Forced so many years to be outside. Their plan was not to take Town of Ashes by violence. They planned to take it by power. They arrived and stood in the middle of it for some time. A deep breath in, breath out. A dance began. First hands, gently moving up and down. Later feet circled on the pavement. To the rhythm. One, two, three, four. A rapid jump and down on the floor. Five, six, seven, eight. Moved around like small debris on the wind.^♱♱

"We are all in hell when we fail to exist. Avoiding hell and affirming joy, the task of not failing to exist is the task to unconditionally insist. Insist in dancing when the music is over and the heart is too heavy; insist on mattering when your life is deemed not to matter. […] Not to be in hell when failing to exist is to create worlds worth proliferating, it is to dance when at the edge of horror. And because of the horror at the edge, it is to insist on singing yet another transcendentally immanent refrain. And repeat it one hundred and sixty-four times in the space of one minute, as if nothing else mattered: love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love." André Lepecki, Sweat (p.161)

^♱ Ballroom culture dates far back to the late XIX century. Underground LGBTQIA+ culture began having balls known as drag balls. They were in direct defiance of laws banning citizens from wearing clothes of the opposite gender. "It is the ball where men dress as women and women dress as men. [..] It was fashionable for the intelligentsia and social leaders of both Harlem and the downtown area to occupy boxes at this ball and look down from above at the queerly assorted throng on the dancing floor, males in flowing gowns and feathered headdresses and females in tuxedos and box-back suits." writes Langston Hughes in "Spectacles of Color" chapter of his autobiography.¹²

Mass culture capitalizes ball culture, takes what is owned by black, queer minorities. It was widely used in many music videos — Madonna was one of the first ones who took it out there. Later on, many other singers used it as a theme for their music videos. Now it is being used by rap artists who are performing archetypical vampires. Some of them take it to another level, creating a new, modern vampire that transcendents the binary, race, and sexuality.

^♱♱ The figure of the vampire becomes a symbol of resistance but also is a resistance itself already. For centuries pushed away from heteronormative, religious and nationalistic norms took away the pride of being other. Otherness came with the price of hate and in some cases death. Like in many stories, also the religious ones, good always conquers.The ugly, the bad and the mad become new everything. Because with no oppositionists there is no progress.

Strange Fruit Performance

Lil Nas X photoshoot for Rodeo

This thesis has been written by Ola Rubik for the graphic design bachelor diploma at Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague. It was written in self conscious fiction. That helped me to grasp the underlying truth which sometimes might be obscure and ugly. Two layers, which I operated in-between, allowed me to obtain and share different views on liberation and resistance seen in many old and modern examples.

I was researching visual representations of vampirism in contemporary culture including pop culture artists like Lil Nas X. The use of fiction became a motivation for many artists but also became inspiration for my thesis and for my future art practice. I relied on my own experience. Growing up in XXI century Poland, a revolutionary space that faces not only global postmodern challenges and political changes, but also those characteristic for post-soviet countries, I have had the opportunity to gain such experience.

Here you can watch my visual essay which I have made alongside writing.

I would like to thank: Dirk Vis who guided me through the whole process and swam with me in the cold sea; Gosia Król for patience and great comments; Malwina Bąk for language support; Pascal de Man for the code and replying any time; François Girard-Meunier for coding with me. I would like to thank Poland. Without you I would be the person I am now.

Big up to the people of two amazing typefoundries - Forge and Gruppo Due - who let me use their beautiful letters to elevate my not so elaborate words. Modor typeface was used for the body text and Erika for the footnotes and endnotes.

Main research sources:

Upiór. Historia Naturalna by Łukasz Kozak
Faggots and their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell
Wampir. Biografia symboliczna by Maria Janion
Romantic Imprisonment: Women And Other Glorified Outcasts by Nina Auerbach
Lil Nas X - Rodeo
Lil Tracy - Beautiful Nightmare
Lil Uzi Vert - Sanguine Paradise
Pearl Prismus - Strange Fruit (1945)

Image sources from top to bottom:

Vampirella by Joe Katsuko
Eartheater, Phoenix by Daniel Sannwald
Lil Uzi Vert in photoshoot
Lil Nas X in "Montero" videoclip
Vampire grills
VHS cover
Teresa Graves as Vampira form 1974
Lil Nas X in Rodeo videoclip
Pearl Primus dancing
Lil Nas X in Rodeo lookbook
Lil Nas X in Rodeo lookbook

Sources:

^1. Article ^2. Wampir. Biografia symboliczna by Maria Janion ^3. Article ^4. Article ^5. Article ^6. Article ^7. Upiór. Historia Naturalna by Łukasz Kozak ^8. Dracula and the Doctors: Bad Blood, Menstrual Taboo and the New Woman by Marie Mulvey-Roberts, p. 78 ^9. Dracula and the Doctors: Bad Blood, Menstrual Taboo and the New Woman by Marie Mulvey-Roberts, p. 79 ^10. Upiór. Historia Naturalna by Łukasz Kozak ^11. Article ^12. The Big Sea: An Autobiography by Langston Hughes