Jimmy DeSana: Suburban
Dan Nadel and Laurie Simmons
This surreally lyrical, sexually charged book collects Jimmy DeSana’s earlier work, made from 1980 to 1983. For his series Suburban, DeSana staged photos of nude subjects in various evocative poses, entwined with everyday objects and lit with gel-covered tungsten lights. Rather than constructing a space, the “suburban” was a place of examining stereotypes and norms. Of this series, DeSana told Laurie Simmons, his contemporary and longtime roommate, “I don’t really think of that work as erotic. I think of the body almost as an object. I attempted to use the body but without the eroticism that some photographers use frequently. I think I de-eroticized a lot of it. Particularly in that period, but that is the way the suburbs are in a sense.” Interest in DeSana is at a renewed high: Salon 94 represents his estate and mounted a well-received exhibition in 2012, and art and photography from the early 1980s is enjoying a renaissance across all media. There is a special interest now in queer artists and the legacy of a generation destroyed by AIDS, with regard to contemporary photography and queer culture and Jimmy DeSana: Suburban is an essential contribution to this evolving canon.
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