Jimmy De Sana
Jimmy DeSana (November 12, 1949 – July 27, 1990) was an American artist, and a key figure in the East Village punk art and New Wave scene of the 1970s and 1980s. DeSana's photography has been described as "anti-art" in its approach to capturing images of the human body, in a manner ranging from "savagely explicit to purely symbolic"., William S. Burroughs wrote the introduction to his collection of photographs "Submission" which was self-published in 1980. His work includes the album cover for the Talking Heads album "More Songs about Buildings and Food". Early life  and education. DeSana was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1949 and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1972, DeSana moved to New York after studying at the University of Georgia. Work. DeSana began to take photographs being a teen, mostly photographing his friends and acquaintances naked. Portraits included key figures of the punk and New Wave scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s in New York like Kathy Acker, Laurie Simmons, Kenneth Anger, David Byrne, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, Debbie Harry, and Patti Astor, amongst others. His early photographs were of his friends striking silly and sexy poses in  houses and gardens. He moved to New York in 1973. DeSana continued to picture the human body as the primary subject. He worked in black and white till 1980, when he began to experiment with color photography. DeSana's "Suburban" series included neo-surreal, staged photographs of both nude bodies and mundane objects. "Remainders" series marked a move away from the human body towards "objects through abstraction." Th series included everyday items like balloons, flour, and aluminum foil are dreamily lit in spectral hues. DeSana started making these works shortly after his diagnosis with HIV in 1985. He had numerous  solo exhibitions, including those in Wilkinson Gallery, London; Pat Hearn Gallery, New York; Galerie Jacques de Windt, Brussels and Museum of the Twentieth Century, Vienna, Austria DeSana was featured in the 1981 P.S.1 exhibition "New York/New Wave" curated by Diego Cortez and included artists like Basquiat, Sarah Charlesworth, and Kenny Scharf"." DeSana died in 1990 from AIDS related illness.