Jimmy De Sana

In 2022, it was announced that the estate would now be co-managed with P.P.O.W. gallery.

DeSana's first museum retrospective is slated for the Brooklyn Museum in late 2022. The retrospective will showcase the pioneering yet underrecognized artist's New York City downtown art, music and film scenes during the 1970s and 1980s. The show is curated by the art historian and curator Drew Sawyer alongside the artist Laurie Simmons.

In 2020, "The Sodomite Invasion: Experimentation, Politics and Sexuality in the work of Jimmy DeSana and Marlon T. Riggs" was shown at Griffin Arts Project in North Vancouver, British Columbia.

At Pioneer Works in 2016, a suite of photographers were shown from the artist's archives. Singer and writer Johanna Fateman wrote, "[DeSana] troubled suburban interiors with nude models in precarious poses, recasting everyday objects as BDSM props in his spare, elegant tableaux."

In 2013, "Party Picks," a selection of DeSana’s photography from 1975 to 1987 was shown at Salon 94 gallery.

DeSana died in 1990 from AIDS related illness. DeSana's first museum retrospective was at the Brooklyn Museum in 2022-2023.

When DeSana died in 1990, he left his estate to the photographer and filmmaker Laurie Simmons. The estate was co-managed with Simmons and Salon 94 gallery for nearly a decade.

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.

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.

In 1972, DeSana moved to New York after studying at the University of Georgia.

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.

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". DeSana was close collaborators with photographer Laurie Simmons and writer William S. Burroughs, who wrote the introduction to DeSana's self-published collection of photographs Submission. His work includes the album cover for the Talking Heads album More Songs about Buildings and Food as well as John Giorno’s LP, You’re The Guy I Want To Share My Money With. .mw-parser-output .infobox-subbox{padding:0;border:none;margin:-3px;width:auto;min-width:100%;font-size:100%;clear:none;float:none;background-color:transparent}.mw-parser-output .infobox-3cols-child{margin:auto}.mw-parser-output .infobox .navbar{font-size:100%}body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-header,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-subheader,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-above,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-title,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-image,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-full-data,body.skin-minerva .mw-parser-output .infobox-below{text-align:center}

DeSana was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1949. He grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.