Jimmy DeSana

Jimmy DeSana was a groundbreaking photographer who was a key figure in New York’s downtown music and art scene in the 1970sand ’80s. DeSana was a frequent contributor to publications including the East Village Eye and SoHo Weekly News, as well as to the New York Rocker, photographing musicians such as Talking Heads, Debbie Harry, and Billy Idol. He exhibited at Pat Hearn Gallery, Galerie Jablonka, and at PS1, as part of the seminal 1981 exhibition New York/New Wave. Jimmy DeSana was a groundbreaking photographer who was a key figure in New York’s downtown music and art scene in the 1970sand ’80s. DeSana was a frequent contributor to publications including the East Village Eye and SoHo Weekly News, as well as to the New York Rocker, photographing musicians such as Talking Heads, Debbie Harry, and Billy Idol. He exhibited at Pat Hearn Gallery, Galerie Jablonka, and at PS1, as part of the seminal 1981 exhibition New York/New Wave. Laurie Simmons is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, including at the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Kunstrum Munchen; the Whitney Biennial; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Simmons lives and works in New York. Laurie Simmons is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, including at the Baltimore Museum of Art; the Kunstrum Munchen; the Whitney Biennial; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Simmons lives and works in New York. Dan Nadel is a writer and editor for art and visual culture publications, and an art curator. He is the author of Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries, 1900-1969 and Art in Time: Unknown Comic Book Adventures, 1940-1980; the coauthor of Electrical Banana: Masters of Psychedelic Art; the editor of Gary Panter; the coeditor of the online version of The Comics Journal; and the curator of What Nerve!: Alternative Figures in American Art from 1960 to the Present at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. He is also the founder of PictureBox, a Grammy Award-winning publishing company.

Sprawled on couches and carpets, slathered with dish soap, or balanced precariously on dressers and tables, DeSana's figures explore sexuality and desire. – ArtNet NewsThe photos represent an early and rarely-seen body of DeSana's work, but still feel remarkably fresh and relevant today, as suburban sprawl and gentrification creep outward, sexual mores are challenged and re-evaluated, and the complexity of the human form continues to enthrall artists. – ArtNet NewsJimmy DeSana uses the body the way a dancer does to express emotion and tell a story much bigger then the pleasures of the flesh. – Advocate