New Orleans: The Goth Mecca

Text & Photos by Fred Berger

This vertical Black & White photo depicts two goth girls at the Angel club in New Orleans. Nikki, on the left, stands with her back against a chain-link fence, pressed by her friend Jessica who is on her knees with her right cheek and left hand touching Nikki’s bare belly. Nikki wears a derby hat and a shredded black dress revealing part of her torso. She has black lipstick and eyeliner, and her black hair falls across her right breast in a braided pigtail. Jessica has a white lacey gown and heavy goth makeup, and most strikingly she has stage blood dripping from her eyes. She has long black hair brushed back on top and falling at the side over her left shoulder. Nikki stares blankly at the camera and Jessica gazes with an intense expression towards the left. Jessica gives the impression of a vampire feeding off her paralyzed victim. Nikki is visible from the knees up and Jessica is visible from the hips up. They are both slim and attractive young women. The photo is illuminated by the camera’s flash attachment.

With a flare for the melodramatic, Nikki (left) and Jessica pose at the Angel Club. They are authentic Cajuns with French surnames and a Frankophonic dialect. They could have stepped right out of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, in which vampires cry blood tears. (Photo & Copyright © by Fred Berger)

It was in January 1997 that I made my first trip to New Orleans, a city whose haunted mystique had been firmly established by the gothic horror literature of Anne Rice and Poppy Z. Brite. I had read the former’s 1976 novel Interview with the Vampire and the latter’s 1996 novel Exquisite Corpse, both of which largely take place in its elegantly decadent French Quarter. So strong is the town’s enchanting allure that Trent Reznor and Marilyn Manson each lived and worked there in the 1990s, producing records at Reznor’s famous Nothing Studios, which had formerly been a funeral home. It was here that Manson recorded his breakthrough second album Antichrist Superstar in 1996, galvanized by the Crescent City’s vampiric and voodoo energy. As a source of inspiration for darkly inclined writers, artists, and musicians, there’s nothing comparable to this timeless urban anomaly.

This vertical Black & White photo depicts the same two goth girls. They are standing in front of the 18th century Saint Louis Cathedral in New Orleans’ Jackson Square. Jessica is on the left of the photo with her arms wrapped around Nikki. Jessica wears a sleeveless black dress, three necklaces, and a silver hand ornament on her left hand. Nikki wears her signature derby hat, a black long-sleeved pullover top, and black velvet leggings. In her left hand she holds a cigarette, and every finger has a ring. They have identical makeup – black lipstick and eyeliner. Jessica’s long black hair is parted in the middle and falls mostly behind her shoulders. Nikki’s black hair hangs in two braided pigtails, with a tangled mass of tresses falling over the left side of her face. They are looking to their right and are visible from the knees up. The cathedral’s main steeple is half visible at the left of the photo, and the top of one of its two side steeples is visible above Nikki’s derby. To the right of the photo is an old-fashioned gas streetlamp. It’s an overcast day, creating a somber atmosphere.

Nikki and Jessica embrace in the shadow of Saint Louis Cathedral in the historic French Quarter. The cobblestone pavement, gas streetlamps, Napoleonic era architecture, ubiquitous French flags and street names create a distinctly non-American, non-contemporary atmosphere. (Photo & Copyright © by Fred Berger)

The highlights of my trip to New Orleans began with an excursion to the Angel Club, a favorite haunt of the local goth scene. Cavernous and lavishly decorated, it was the ideal location for a weekly danse macabre, with a young, exuberant, and dressed to kill clientele. Two of the patrons in particular caught my photographer’s eye, a pair of genuine Cajun goth girls, Jessica and Nikki. Their photos appear in this article, one taken at the club and the other two on the following day at Saint Louis Cathedral, the oldest cathedral in America dating back to 1718. My final outing was to the St. Louis #1 cemetery, the city’s first burial ground established in 1789. Its moldering mausoleums and sarcophagi would have made an outstanding backdrop for a photoshoot, but this would have to wait for my next sublime and unforgettable visit to America’s ‘Goth Mecca.’

This horizontal Black & White photo features these same two young women standing in front of Saint Louis Cathedral. They are dressed and appear as described in the previous photo. Nikki, in the derby hat, is on the left, and Jessica is hugging her with both hands clasped on Nikki’s right shoulder. Nikki looks to her right while Jessica looks slightly upwards with a pensive expression. The central part of the cathedral’s facade is in the background at the left of the photo. The base of its main central steeple and the top of its smaller left steeple appear from left to right. Both women are visible from the chest up.

The Cathedral is located on the north side of Jackson Square along the Mississippi River. It hovers over the park like a somber apparition, bearing witness to the tarot card readers and voodoo vendors who have set up shop there, as the playing of a blues saxophonist echoes wistfully. (Photo & Copyright © by Fred Berger)

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