Jimmy De Sana

American photographer and visual artist, a maven of the 1970–80s East Village "punk art"/New Wave scene (12 November 1949, Detroit, Michigan — 27 July 1990, Manhattan, New York). Jimmy DeSana was renowned for his "anti-art" approach, with portraits and photographs of the human body characterized by critics "from savagely explicit to purely symbolic." He extensively collaborated with photographer and filmmaker Laurie Simmons (who managed DeSana's estates for several decades after his death) and renowned writer William S. Burroughs, who penned the introduction to Jimmy's self-published '79 photobook Submission. DeSana created several critically-acclaimed album artworks, most notably More Songs About Buildings And Food (1978) by Talking Heads and John Giorno's spoken word/experimental '81 collaboration with Laurie Anderson and Burroughs. Jimmy De Sana grew up in Atlanta, Georgia and began photographing in his early teenage years, primarily doing nude portraits of his friends. In 1972, after graduating from the University Of Georgia, DeSana moved to New York. Jimmy became prominent with his innovative and striking portraits of numerous artists who dominated the NYC scene in the late 1970s to early 80s, including Kathy Acker, Kenneth Anger, David Byrne, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, and Deborah Harry, among others. Jimmy DeSana had several solo exhibitions in the UK and Europe and regularly appeared at Pat Hearn Gallery in New York. In 1981, DeSana participated in the New York/New Wave group show curated by Diego Cortez at MoMA PS1 alongside such prominent artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sarah Charlesworth and Kenny Scharf. DeSana died in 1990 from AIDS complications, leaving his collections to long-time collaborator Laurie Simmons. Since 2022, DeSana's estate has been co-managed by P.P.O.W. Gallery. His works are in permanent collections at many prestigious museums, including MoMA, Whitney Museum Of American Art, Metropolitan Museum Of Art, Museum Of Contemporary Art Chicago, ICA Boston and Museum Of Fine Arts, Houston. The Brooklyn Museum organized Jimmy DeSana's museum retrospective in 2022–23.