You may not know Robert Scott Hooper by name, but his gaze has shaped impressions of Sin City for decades. 

For more than 40 years, the prolific photographer documented the city’s entertainers, architecture, spectacle, and visual culture. His images appeared in magazines, newspapers, and playbills, and on billboards, postcards, taxicabs, and other pieces of visual commentary on the city’s cultural landscape.

Now, that legacy has found a permanent home at UNLV. The Robert Scott Hooper Photograph Collection in UNLV Special Collections & Archives preserves nearly seven decades of material documenting both the photographer’s career and the evolving identity 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,” said Aaron Mayes, visual materials curator at UNLV Libraries. 

Dating from approximately 1950 to 2018, the collection includes photographic negatives, positives, slides, prints, Polaroids, business records, correspondence, drawings, audiovisual material, and ephemera created over a lifetime of collaboration with his wife and business partner, Theresa Holmes.

Following Hooper’s death in 2023 and Holmes’ death in 2024, their son, James, worked with Mayes to place the archive at UNLV, where it will be preserved for future generations of researchers. 

The collection reflects the extraordinary breadth of Hooper’s career, including celebrity portraiture, stage productions, advertising campaigns, and photojournalism, as well as imagery documenting the evolving built environment of Las Vegas. It also contains an extensive body of work focused on the female form, including his contributions to Playboy.

In addition to documenting the people and places of Las Vegas, Hooper’s archive strengthens Special Collections & Archives’ Sexual Entertainment and Economies collecting initiative, according to 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 university’s archival record to include the experiences of sex workers, burlesque dancers, activists, performers, and others who shaped and challenged Nevada’s cultural landscape.

“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,” said Quigley.

A professional photojournalist, Hooper worked for organizations including the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Las Vegas News Bureau, and Vegas Visitor. 

The collection’s richness lies not only in its size (159.26 cubic feet housed across 268 boxes), but also in the range of imagery Hooper produced throughout his career. The archive spans celebrity portraiture, production shows, commercial advertising, urban development, journalism, and studies of the female form. Together, the materials provide a sweeping visual record of Las Vegas through Hooper’s lens.

Celebrities & Entertainers

Hooper photographed generations of entertainers and Vegas headliners. Among them are these promotional images of German-American entertainers Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, whose illusion act and work with animals became synonymous with modern Las Vegas spectacle. 

During his career, Hooper documented celebrities both onstage and behind the scenes. While working for the Las Vegas News Bureau, he photographed several of Frank Sinatra’s private casino parties on the Strip. Other celebrities in the collection include Liberace, Tom Jones, Jimmy Durante, and Liza Minnelli.

Production Shows

Hooper photographed many Las Vegas production shows in his work, including this production of the Folies Bergere at the Tropicana Las Vegas, the longest-running show in Las Vegas history. 

The Female Form

Hooper was a longtime contributing photographer for Las Vegan magazine. This June 1982 cover photo accompanied the feature story “Takin’ It To The Lake: Wet ‘n’ Wild Summer Swimwear.”

Combining celebrity culture, events promotion, and glamour photography, this March 21, 1981 image of Vanna White was created for publicity surrounding the Mint 400 off-road race. 

Vegas Building Boom

The Strip saw numerous changes throughout Hooper’s career, and his lens captured much of the evolution. Contained in his collection are photographs and video, including a time-lapse documenting construction of the Luxor Hotel and Casino in 1993. 

While documenting the construction of the Venetian in the late 1990s, Hooper aimed his camera south to also photograph the rising Eiffel Tower replica at Paris Las Vegas.  

Commercial Photography

Hooper frequently blended glamour imagery with commercial advertising assignments, shaping public perceptions of Las Vegas. This image of a woman 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 document the festivities, which included runway looks from retailers in the new mall.

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