Once upon a time, brunette bombshell Dita Von Teese was blonde Heather Sweet from West Branch, Michigan. And early into her transformation into a burlesque and fetish icon, a fellow Midwesterner says he knew she would one day become famous.
“I could tell she was going to be a star,” says Chas Ray Krider, who resides in Columbus, Ohio, and photographed Von Teese several times from 1998 through 2000. “From the beginning, it was obvious that she had the credentials, and the look, and the whole attitude and charisma to be a major celebrity. She had her thing down really well.”
Krider will exhibit about 20 photos of Von Teese from his archives — including some that have not yet been published — at the Dirty Show, the annual erotic art festival set for Feb. 13-21 at Detroit’s Russell Industrial Center.
When Krider first met her, Von Teese was a 26-year-old fetish model with a penchant for Old Hollywood-style glamor, including a corset-cinched waist. This was before she appeared on a 2002 cover of Playboy magazine (where a typo of “Von Treese” would christen her with her stage name), before her marriage and divorce from disgraced shock rocker Marilyn Manson, and before she became a New York Times bestselling author.
Back then, Krider had been working on a series he dubbed “Motel Fetish” featuring women in hotel rooms — first in sets built in his Ohio studio, and later in real hotels.
“The photographs evoke a narrative,” Krider explains. “They look like stills taken out of a film. The whole treatment has kind of a cinematic look to it. It’s more than just pictures of girls.”
Krider says he aimed to achieve a particular aesthetic by using the hotel lamps for lighting, as well as using film intended to be shot in the daylight. The result is a series of images that look almost like they could be shot by an amateur, lending them an air of erotically charged authenticity.
“It’s very lo-fi. … it’s very noir-looking,” he says, adding, “The colors are saturated and kind of lurid, with a heavy shadow.”
From this body of work, a connection at a Los Angeles-based magazine introduced Krider to Von Teese, who Krider booked as one of four models on a shoot in California. Von Teese knew exactly what to do, he says.
“I had a specific kind of way of working,” he says. “We were on location in a hotel room, and I just moved her around the room based upon the geography and shapes of the space … and then she was free to do as she liked. I might fine-tune the photos, but she was pretty much in control of what the pose would be.”
Krider would go on to shoot Von Teese again during additional sessions in California, Ohio, and Indiana. He says he has remained in touch with her over the years and is compiling the images for a forthcoming book titled The Dita Sessions with her blessing.
“She deserves everything she gets,” he says. “She has worked really hard. She was always ahead of the pack.”
Krider has long called Ohio home, where he now lives with his wife and dog. “I’ve traveled around a bit, but I always drift back to Columbus,” he says. “In the ’70s and ’80s, it was what I called ‘the last of the low overheads.’ Rent was cheap.”
He says he began his photography career in Ohio as a street photographer inspired by Ralph Gibson. “Plus, I was just interested in women and lingerie,” he adds.
“Chas is one of the last of the dying breed of cool erotic photographers,” says Jerry Vile, founder of the Dirty Show, where Krider’s photos will be among 300 or so works of art on display this year.
The event has grown steadily since its 2000 debut in the offices of Orbit magazine, the satirical Detroit-based monthly magazine Vile published in the ’90s, and now draws attendees from around the world.
“I never had much of a goal for the Dirty Show,” Vile says. “It’s totally unplanned. It just became this massive monster. I think it’s probably because it didn’t have me trying to make it successful. I just tried to make it fun.”
In addition to erotic photographs, paintings, drawings, sculptures, and other works of art, the event also features popular burlesque and drag shows, as well as other oddball activations showcasing Vile’s sense of humor. This year, those include the return of a leather nightclub dubbed “The Daddy Hole” and a miniature strip club starring a tiny dancer, Lil Miss Fire Fly, who calls herself the “world’s smallest side show performer extraordinaire.”
“I think one of the biggest things is a few years ago, I gave up on trying to compete with the academic art world,” Vile says. “We’re cooler than the academic art world. We invented our own arena, just like punk rock. The art world has gotten fat and boring, the same way music did when punk rock came out.”
But Vile, who once fronted a Detroit punk band called the Boners, says he’s not just trying to titillate and transgress. The strip club’s latest incarnation is furnished with miniature furniture and was inspired, in part, by Vile’s time chauffeuring its pint-size performers and seeing how they were treated in the real world.
“What makes this truly art is it’s forcing people that are [of average height] to navigate their way through a setting that is built for a different height,” he says. “Maybe it will make people think for a second.”
As for a planned Dirty Show booth featuring the Detroit Cougars, well, that’s just Vile being cheeky.
No, it’s not a tribute to the Detroit Cougars, the hockey team founded 100 years ago that eventually became the mighty Detroit Red Wings.
“It’s something for soccer moms gone wild,” Vile says, adding that it will be staffed by “young boys.”
Vile clarifies that they are in fact adults. The Dirty Show is for attendees age 21 and older, after all.
“To me, if you are in your 20s or 30s, you’re a kid,” he says. “I mean, you know, the easiest thing for people now is to call me Dirty Old Man.”
The Dirty Show is open from 7 p.m.-2 a.m. Friday, Feb. 13-Saturday, Feb. 14 and Friday, Feb. 20-Saturday, Feb. 21 at the Russell Exhibition Center, 1600 Clay St., Detroit; dirtydetroit.com. Tickets start at $50.
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This article appears in Feb. 4-17, 2026.