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Join Aperture Foundation for a panel discussion about photographer Jimmy DeSana’s life and work, with Paula Greif, Laurie Simmons, William J. Simmons, and Elisabeth Sussman, moderated by Dan Nadel. DeSana’s new book Suburban (Aperture/Salon 94, 2015), coedited by Nadel and Laurie Simmons, also includes essays by Sussman and Laurie Simmons. This surreally lyrical, sexually charged volume collects DeSana’s earlier work, made from the 1970s to 1980s.

Jimmy DeSana (born in Detroit, 1949; died in New York, 1990) was a groundbreaking photographer who was a key figure in New York’s downtown music and art scene in the 1970s and ’80s. DeSana was a frequent contributor to publications including the East Village Eye and SoHo Weekly News, as well as 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.

Paula Greif is a ceramic artist based in Hudson, New York. A close friend of Jimmy DeSana’s (and designer of his book Submission), she has been, among other things, a graphic designer, music video director, and art director for the likes of Barneys, the Smiths, Rolling Stone, and Richard Avedon.

Dan Nadel, founder of the Grammy Award-winning publishing company PictureBox, has authored books including Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900–1969 (2006) and Gary Panter (2008), as well as curated exhibitions such as What Nerve! Alternative Figures in American Art: 1960 to the Present (2014–15) and Return of the Repressed: Destroy All Monsters 1973–1977 (2011). Nadel is the key accounts sales director of Artbook | D.A.P.

Laurie Simmons is a photographer represented by Salon 94, New York, who has exhibited internationally, including at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.

William J. Simmons is a critic, curator, and art historian based in New York City. He received his BA in art history and queer studies from Harvard University, and is currently a PhD student in art history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His work has appeared in Artforum, Frieze, Art in America, Aperture, Modern Painters, BOMB, W, and Flaunt.

Elisabeth Sussman is the Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She cocurated William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961–2008, which toured internationally. Sussman was also a curator for the 2012 Whitney Biennial.