The Photographer Behind Las Vegas’ Picture | News Heart

You could not know Robert Scott Hooper by identify, however his gaze has formed impressions of Sin City for many years. 

For greater than 40 years, the prolific photographer documented town’s entertainers, structure, spectacle, and visible tradition. His pictures appeared in magazines, newspapers, and playbills, and on billboards, postcards, taxicabs, and different items of visible commentary on town’s cultural panorama.

Now, that legacy has discovered a everlasting dwelling at UNLV. The Robert Scott Hooper Photograph Collection in UNLV Special Collections & Archives preserves practically seven many years of fabric documenting each the photographer’s profession and the evolving identification of Las Vegas.

“Robert Scott Hooper’s photographs capture a Las Vegas that was constantly reinventing itself. His work offers a remarkable visual record of the people, performances, and imagery that shaped the city’s modern identity,” stated Aaron Mayes, visible supplies curator at UNLV Libraries. 

Dating from roughly 1950 to 2018, the gathering contains photographic negatives, positives, slides, prints, Polaroids, enterprise data, correspondence, drawings, audiovisual materials, and ephemera created over a lifetime of collaboration together with his spouse and enterprise associate, Theresa Holmes.

Following Hooper’s loss of life in 2023 and Holmes’ loss of life in 2024, their son, James, labored with Mayes to put the archive at UNLV, the place it will likely be preserved for future generations of researchers. 

The assortment displays the extraordinary breadth of Hooper’s profession, together with superstar portraiture, stage productions, promoting campaigns, and photojournalism, in addition to imagery documenting the evolving constructed atmosphere of Las Vegas. It additionally accommodates an intensive physique of labor targeted on the feminine type, together with his contributions to Playboy.

In addition to documenting the folks and locations of Las Vegas, Hooper’s archive strengthens Special Collections & Archives’ Sexual Entertainment and Economies accumulating initiative, based on Sarah Quigley, director of Special Collections & Archives.

Launched in 2023 in partnership with UNLV’s Department of Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies, the initiative expands the college’s archival report to incorporate the experiences of intercourse employees, burlesque dancers, activists, performers, and others who formed and challenged Nevada’s cultural panorama.

“Hooper’s photography documents representations of the female form across entertainment, advertising, and popular culture, creating opportunities for researchers to explore the intersections of gender, labor, performance, and visual culture both within Las Vegas and beyond,” stated Quigley.

Knowledgeable photojournalist, Hooper labored for organizations together with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Las Vegas News Bureau, and Vegas Visitor. 

The assortment’s richness lies not solely in its dimension (159.26 cubic ft housed throughout 268 bins), but additionally within the vary of images Hooper produced all through his profession. The archive spans superstar portraiture, manufacturing reveals, business promoting, city growth, journalism, and research of the feminine type. Together, the supplies present a sweeping visible report of Las Vegas by Hooper’s lens.

Celebrities & Entertainers

Hooper photographed generations of entertainers and Vegas headliners. Among them are these promotional pictures of German-American entertainers Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, whose phantasm act and work with animals turned synonymous with fashionable Las Vegas spectacle. 

During his profession, Hooper documented celebrities each onstage and behind the scenes. While working for the Las Vegas News Bureau, he photographed a number of of Frank Sinatra’s personal on line casino events on the Strip. Other celebrities within the assortment embrace Liberace, Tom Jones, Jimmy Durante, and Liza Minnelli.

Production Shows

Hooper photographed many Las Vegas manufacturing reveals in his work, together with this manufacturing of the Folies Bergere on the Tropicana Las Vegas, the longest-running present in Las Vegas historical past. 

The Female Form

Hooper was a longtime contributing photographer for Las Vegan journal. This June 1982 cowl photograph accompanied the characteristic story “Takin’ It To The Lake: Wet ‘n’ Wild Summer Swimwear.”

Combining superstar tradition, occasions promotion, and glamour images, this March 21, 1981 picture of Vanna White was created for publicity surrounding the Mint 400 off-road race. 

Vegas Building Boom

The Strip noticed quite a few adjustments all through Hooper’s profession, and his lens captured a lot of the evolution. Contained in his assortment are images and video, together with a time-lapse documenting development of the Luxor Hotel and Casino in 1993. 

While documenting the development of the Venetian within the late Nineteen Nineties, Hooper aimed his digicam south to additionally {photograph} the rising Eiffel Tower duplicate at Paris Las Vegas.  

Commercial Photography

Hooper regularly blended glamour imagery with business promoting assignments, shaping public perceptions of Las Vegas. This picture of a lady floating in a pool was taken on April 30, 1982, for R&R Advertising’s design for the Las Vegas Convention Authority billboard.

Photojournalism

When the Fashion Show Mall opened in 1981, Hooper was there to doc the festivities, which included runway seems to be from retailers within the new mall.

Hooper photographed California Gov. Ronald Reagan and Nevada Gov. Paul Laxalt at a Las Vegas occasion on January 29, 1968, whereas working for the Las Vegas News Bureau.