Jimmy DeSana: Suburban

Jimmy DeSana: Suburban collects in print for the first time DeSana’s surreally lyrical, sexually charged photographs from his series of the same name, made in the late 1970s through the 1980s. DeSana staged photos of nude subjects, male and female, in various strange, evocative poses, entwined with everyday objects and luridly lit with gel-covered tungsten lights. The photographs suggest broad physical comedy as much as sadomasochism.

“I don’t really think of that work as erotic,” DeSana has said of this series. “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 … but that is the way the suburbs are in a sense.” At a moment of growing interest in DeSana’s life and work, this volume (edited by Dan Nadel and DeSana’s longtime roommate and friend Laurie Simmons) offers access to a critical — and previously unpublished — early body of the photographer’s work.