^{Celebrating Women}

The Photographic Artistry of R. Scott Hooper

By Jack E. Sheehan

We sit in a floral cove at a west side restaurant: hairstylist Chadda Angione; Playboy Magazine photographer Robert Scott Hooper; Theresa Holmes, his lady and professional associate: and I with a tape recorder and a list of questions.

Each visit the cocktail waitress pays to our table she leans in a little, for the scraps of conversation she collects and the reporter's paraphernalia tell her something spicy is under discussion. She brings us coffee for starters (this is a first meeting), but we gradually work into rum and tropical drinks as Hooper relaxes the barriers present in the early minutes of our interview.

Bob Hooper is understandably leery of reporters. Not all journalists treat his job as seriously as he does. Questions like "Seen any hot chicks lately?" offend him. "That attitude towards my job really hurts me," he says. "It downgrades my profession and shows some people don't recognize the work that is involved."

Theresa is the watchdog of the interview, well-appointed to the task with cerulean blue eyes which grow interminably deeper in hue as the afternoon sifts into dusky evening. She is Bob's full-time stylist, arranger, and lover, and formerly a model who was being groomed for Playboy's centerfold when they met. She is a professional on both sides of the camera.

"I was working at the Las Vegas News Bureau and Theresa worked in a PR office at one of the hotels. Bob says, "I found out she was a future Playmate, and I was told by the magazine to keep my eye on her. I have for ten years."

Theresa and Bob are a team in all phases of their lives, and during our interview she functions as a self-delegated censor.

"I don't know if you should say that, Bob"

"We better go off the record with that".

"Let's emphasize the positive aspects of working for Playboy, Bob".

"I wonder if that statement came out right".

Hooper is a serious, darkly handsome man, a bit intimidating on introduction. He is not a verbal person, even when he's working, but does most of his communicating with his eyes, which are brooding at repose, sparkling when he laughs. He has a wonderful smile that recurringly stretches into a full-face grin, causing his eyes to narrow and his table mates to smile back in appreciation of his mood. Beneath it all, there is an earthiness about Bob Hooper, a quiet vitality.

My questions inspire cautiously worded responses at time, hair-trigger and volatile bursts at others. One inquiry rocks him totally: "Where's this guy from....Disneyland?" he asks the ceiling. A brief moment later, perhaps in apology, he nods his head and gravely inhales one link in an endless chain of cigarettes, "Now that's a good question...a really good question."

Hooper has been in Las Vegas since 1966, working first at the Review Journal, then for the News Bureau for four-and-a-half years. He's also done local ad work, billboards, layout, graphic design.

He was born in Ottumwa, Iowa, forty-some years back and worked as a commercial artist in Des Moines in the early sixties.

He has worked extensively for Playboy since 1973 and has won two major awards from the magazine for his contributions. In 1977, the first year Playboy singled out writers and photographers for honors, Hooper's shooting of Debra Jo Fondren won the Best Playmate Pictorial award, and in 1978 he was given the Best Pictorial Reportage award for his feature on New York's swingers' emporium, Plato's Retreat.

Bob has done assignments for the New York Times and Business Week, as well as photo stories for Oui, Playboy's California based affiliate.

Photography was just a hobby for Hooper back in Iowa. "I spent weekends photographing women. This was always my dream, to be a Playboy photographer."

Which prompts the question: "How did you get your break with Playboy, a magazine besieged by photographers aspiring to its pages?"

"I got my shot through Alex Urba, who is no longer with Playboy. I had assisted him on a travel feature on Nevada and Las Vegas in 1969. Playboy usually works only with known quantities, but this time they needed a relatively simple picture and I was available. I went to Reno to do a story on Bill Lear and his steam car, which didn't yet exist. I had an art director and they had an idea all thought out, but once we got to Reno, none of the elements were there. So I had to do some wild stuff. I took a picture of his face, a pure double exposure. I set off smoke bombs in the laboratory, also went to Harrah's auto collection and photographed Lear's face over the headlights of some antique cars."

"Look, I am not the world's greatest photographer by far, but I have an ability and an outlook that makes me come up with ideas that are interesting to the reader. I don't know whether it's talent or not. Anyway, I'm walking through Harrah's collection looking at all these antique cars. I'm an erotic person, and I'm thinking of all the sexuality these automobiles represent, all the sexual experiences that have taken place in these cars. I thought Playboy should have a pictorial on sex education in the automobile. They liked the idea which I outlined in detail and were going to have one of their staff photographers do it. But Mark Kaufman was the picture editor at the time and, to shorten the story, he let me do it. It was a six to nine-month project, traveling all over the country to find these special cars and it ran as a ten-page pictorial in 1973."

Theresa adds, "That project established Bob as a photographer who could work with a certain amount of freedom."

"Playboy has always worked under very tight restrictions," Bob says, "with editors, art directors, stylists. There is a strong direction from the magazine, especially on centerfolds."

"In the last couple years Theresa and I have been used as a SWAT team. If the magazine was lacking pizazz, or sex, they'd say, 'We need five pages, why don't you go to San Diego and do a swingers' scrapbook." A Hooper-Holmes pizazz pictorial two years ago caused considerable buzzing. In their feature on Plato's Retreat they photographed a variety of couples (none of them professional models) in flagrante delicto.

"Just another day at the office?" I wondered aloud.

"It was wild," Bob recalls. "Theresa was trying to set up some scenes and she had the names of certain couples that agreed to be photographed. She had Bill and Mary, Lisa and John, Frank and Betty. But by the time we were ready to shoot, Bill was no longer with Mary, Lisa was now with Frank, and John was by himself. Those people were there to play, not pose. Believe me, it would have been much easier to hire professional models for the job, but Playboy always goes for authenticity."

Along with Hooper's aforementioned shooting of Debra Jo Fondren, a September 1977 centerfold selected as 1978 Playmate of the Year (”I shot her a total of twenty-five days spread over seven months"), he has done a pictorial called Ladies of the Evening ("Every girl featured was a real working girl"), and the Girls of Las Vegas, a year ago. That one was a disappointment to Bob.

"There's seldom a time I'm aesthetically pleased with the final product in the magazine. Only if I had complete editing control would I get exactly what I want. When The Girls of Las Vegas issue came out I wanted to go into hiding. The art directors evidently think that every girl in Las Vegas has her pubic hair showing at all times. Never has there been a layout in Playboy where nearly every girl had pubic hair showing like that one. I was going to leave town. Some pictures were chosen only to be as explicit as possible, and when that happens you lose pretty pictures and nice pictures."

Theresa interjects, "The distance from the photographer to the printer is so great, that sometimes what Bob meant is lost between our studio and the printer."

Here our waitress reenters the scenario, replacing a full ashtray with a clean one, which causes Hooper to entreat his listeners in mock disbelief: "Did I smoke all those? Well, that's all right. According to the commercial I can smoke ten packs of these a day without keeling over." When the girl senses her presence has deadened this talk of Las Vegas girls and pubic hair, she whisks a wet cloth over the table and moves to a nearby station, still within earshot.

I'm curious about the working relationship between a Playboy photographer and the beautiful women who pose nude for his camera, but I have trouble phrasing the question as I'm ever fearful of sounding too lecherous or invading a private domain. I choose the longer road and ask Bob to describe a typical shooting from the time he first meets a model (knowing full well there's no such thing as a typical shooting.)

"My younger brother, who is a successful photographer in New York, calls those times ice-breaking ceremonies," Bob says. "I get to know a little about the model, like to see how she moves, and gradually build up a rhythm. Usually wine, music, and conversation are enough."

"Actually," Theresa says, "Bob is so easy to be around. He's honest and slow and most models have no trouble being comfortable around him. I'm available also to play big sister or friend."

"But what," I venture, "if the model would like to be more than just friends with Bob?"

"I sense definitely when a girl is a threat," Theresa answers. "But to let it interfere with our work would be a mistake. If Bob and I are having bad times, I feel it even more. But I have no doubt I'm number one. I won't let my effectiveness go downhill because of a petty jealousy."

Bob concurs. "I detect Theresa's jealousy at times, but our relationship is deep-seated enough that I don't spend much time worrying about that." And he extends her this pearl: "If you want to know what really turns Bob Hooper on, it's even thinking about photographing Theresa. About once a year she lets me and I get all excited just thinking about it."

Some of my models I have a closer relationship with than if it were sexual," he adds. "If we did have sex, it would distort the perspective and make us less successful as professionals."

"But to return to the original question, I start with an idea for shooting and typically everything changes once it starts. We just try to set the scene, let it flow, then take as much out of it as we can. It might be a one-time shot, it might take

several sessions."

"I will say I really lose patience with a model that doesn't want to do the shooting as badly as I do. You find out if a model is willing to give of herself when she's out in Moapa Valley, her knees are red from the cold or sand, and we have to wait for the sun to get in the right position. When a model stops giving, that's all there is." As an afterthought he adds, "I don't like models that are only concerned with the money. I don't do it for the money. I know I could make more money doing other things."

"Do models ever have a change of heart midway through a nude shooting and decide they can't go through with it?" I ask.

"Oh sure," he says. "We're doing a layout on stewardesses now and there's a lot of that. So many girls want to be in Playboy but don't want to take their clothes off. I hate to work with girls that put too many restrictions on a shooting. It usually indicates strangely enough that they want to do it, yet they don't want to do it. I often get burned in this situation.

"I recently had a girl from Dallas, a stewardess, who posed in something see-through. She had a hell of a good time, loved the shooting. But when I drove her back to her hotel between days of shooting, she said she wasn't going through with it. Her southern morality started to haunt her. She had so much fun she felt guilty about it. As a result, all my time and Playboy's money is wasted.

"Let me add, while I'm thinking of it, that despite some of my disenchantment with Playboy, there's nobody better to work for. It would be difficult for me to work for Penthouse or Hustler because I don't look at women the way they do. I am not a medical photographer. Playboy will always back me up and pay all the bills even if I screw it all up. They are reliable with the expenses."

"Do you have a particular philosophy on photographing women that is recognizable in all your work" I ask.

Hooper takes two deep draws on his cigarette, back-to-back lung busters, then guardedly wraps words around his feelings, which cascade forth. I sense we're nearing the core.

"Maybe....I'm the ultimate chauvinist, but I'm crazy about women. My goal in every picture is to make that woman look as beautiful as she can possibly look. Some photographers, many in fact, say that the model is no more important than any part of a photograph...from backdrop to setting to hairstyle to color or composition. I disagree completely. The model is everything in my pictures."

"Many of the quote famous photographers will use the model to show off their technique. I do exactly the opposite. I will change my technique, do anything I have to, to make the woman the most important part of the photograph. Nothing else is important....not the lighting, not the style. It's to celebrate her.

"That's why I will never be known as a famous photographer, because I don't have a recognizable style. (Theresa shakes her head. "Yes he does," she says.)

"There has been a debate in recent years concerning photography as an art form" What are your thoughts on this?" I ask, hoping to tap this philosophical vein for all its worth.

"In an argument about photography as an art, I'd probably just sit and listen. As far as I'm concerned it's and art form. The world can have it's own opinion."

"I started out as an artist, but found photography could satisfy my creative needs faster.. There was a time I worked as an art director at a printing company. I was cramped in a studio working under bright lights, taking one hundred aspirin a week. But now I enjoy the freedom that photography allows me, getting out of the office, traveling all over the country, all over the world, always in different situations, not locked behind the desk."

"I suppose I work harder now than I did then, but I don't feel the strain. I guess I'm happiest when I'm working hard on a project. I know I sleep better when I'm working."

"Whose work do you admire?"

"Mario Casilli, Pompeo Posar. I know what they have to deal with. They get the most out of what they have. Mario I especially like for his incredibly enthusiastic approach to life."

"Do you like Helmut Newton's work?"

"I'm not a fan. He has a different attitude towards women. They are often victims or subjects of degradation in his photos."

"How about Francesco Scavullo or Richard Avedon?"

"Drivers license photographers. If they weren't shooting famous people no one would care. They use the same lighting in every photo."

"As long as we're rolling now, answer this one for me. Why do photographers always wear beards?"

"To disguise their ugliness. If they had beautiful faces they'd be models." (Big laugh from Chadda, who has remained incredibly quiet and attentive throughout the interview. She has known Hooper for years and tells me later that ninety percent of his comments were fresh information to her.)

"Let's try one final one, Bob, and please speak loudly so the cocktail girl can ease the strain on her neck. Does it bother you that more than half the men who look a the magazine are not looking for anything beyond the skin?"

"No, I don't think it does. That doesn't offend me particularly. Although I think the one-handed readers will go for some of the more graphic stuff, like Hustler and Penthouse. If a reader gets a good feeling from your picture, you've done your job. Photography is my only form of expression. Having a lot of people see what I do makes me happy. It would bother me if I thought no one saw it. I enjoy people enjoying what I do."

LAS VEGAN • The City Magazine • March 1980

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