Dwight Hooker


Dwight Hooker was an American photographer and architect. He was best known as a photographer for Playboy magazine and has been described as one of the masters of "the sensual and the erotic", along with photographers Helmut Newton and J. Frederick Smith. One of his photographs became the basis of Lenna, the standard test image for image processing algorithms and related scientific publications.

Career

Hooker photographed the centerfold featuring Lena Söderberg for the best-selling edition of Playboy, the November 1972 edition issue, which sold 7,161,561 copies. A cropped image from that pictorial, known as Lenna, became the standard test image for image processing algorithms and related scientific publications.
Hooker originated and provided the photographs for the magazine's commercial campaign "What sort of a man reads Playboy?", which became an example of sociodemographic segmentation for advertising campaigns. It featured young, educated and urban men who had money and were not averse to spending it and took pleasure as a duty. The campaign, with its use of undressed men and women, was ruled by the US Supreme Court to be "not obscene", although the court decision did call it "offensive".
Other milestones in Hooker's career include photographing the twins Madeleine and Mary Collinson, Marilyn Cole, Jayne Marie Mansfield, Candy Loving, Monica Tidwell, Nancy Cameron, Marilyn Lange and Jill De Vries. He also photographed Playmate and Playboy bunny Barbi Benton and Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning actor Alan Alda.
Hooker mentored other Playboy photographers including Stephen Wayda. He shot the cover for the first paperback edition of Playboy's Book of Forbidden Words, with model Mercy Rooney. He is reported to have the record number of rejections for a Playboy photographer when Hugh Hefner, the publisher, rejected 500 of Hooker's photographs for a centerfold.

Personal life

Hooker retired from Playboy to Sundance, Utah to work as an architect. He was a regular at the Sundance Film Festival.
Hooker died in Michigan on January 3, 2015, at the age of 86.

Playboy work

Playboy centerfolds

Christina series

A book series on imaginary heiress Christina van Bell was written by "Blakely St. James", a pseudonym for multiple authors including Robin Leonard, Charles Platt, Ted Gottfried, William E Butterworth, and Hart Williams. Hooker provided the photographs used on the front and back covers. The model for all the books is Jill De Vries.