Dirk Hooper

Dirk Hooper (born 1969) is an American fetish photographer and fetish artist. He was raised in Moore, Oklahoma, where he resides today. He attended the University of Oklahoma in 1988 for filmmaking and again in 1999 where he pursued a degree in media arts with an emphasis in photography.

During the mid nineties, Dirk had a stint as a comic artist and comic writer on a comic named "Rough Cut" and a pin up comic titled "Bad Girls". He has also done pen and ink illustration work for "The Darkmoor Talisman" and numerous commercial projects. In 1999, Dirk began doing band photography for local musicians, and working on a fine art career with both photography and mixed media artwork. "Toxic Goddess: Volume One", published June 2008, features the photography of Dirk Hooper and Robert Henry with make-up by Jennifer Marks.

Hooper has displayed work in the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, and multiple times in the Individual Artists of Oklahoma Gallery and The Electric Chair Gallery. He has had work accepted times in The Dirty Show in Detroit, Michigan. Among other venues, Hooper was the first American artist to exhibit work at Fetish Project in Brussels, Belgium. In 2007, The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, based at Indiana University, added two of Hooper's photographs into their permanent collection.

While much of his work comes from his own imagination, he has sought out dominatrix, fetish celebrities and adult entertainers to expand his portfolio. Dirk has built a body of work that focuses on fantasy, science, metaphysics, fashion, sexual fetishism and goth subculture influences. A pseudonymous article in Norman Transcript says that, “Dirk Hooper's gothic photography tells forbidden tales to rival the likes of H. P. Lovecraft and the Marquis de Sade.”

Dirk Hooper is CEO and Chairman of the Board for Sight Key Studios Incorporated, a photography studio and entertainment company that provides content for several websites, including Toxic Goddess and The Beefboy Rants.

Quotes
"There's an aesthetic aspect to my interest in both fetish and Goth culture. It's just fascinating visually and is choked with amateur work. But, besides the rich tableau that those cultures offer, it's also something that I am personally interested in and my work follows my passions."

"As an artist, I think it’s important to ask questions with your work and allow the viewer to come to their own conclusions. I’m not interested in reality at all. I’m creating a moment in fantasy and I want the viewer to wonder what happened right before the image they are looking at and figure out what is going to happen next. If my work is a detour from the mundane, then I’ve done my job."

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