Jimmy DeSana: Submission is a long overdue look at the life's work of a prolific and significant figure in photography, LGBTQ history and New York City. The exhibition follows the work of DeSana in three parts, his early work in Atlanta, Georgia, his voice in the punk and alternative subculture of New York in the 1980’s, and lastly his final body of work, dealing with death and facing the AIDS crisis. Many of the photographs involve contorting and condensing the figure into twisted, unnatural poses, and the figures are often nude or semi nude. These uncomfortable, sexy, tension filled photos are what shine the most in the exhibition and come to define DeSana in the years to come.
In the work, Refrigerator, DeSana has posed a woman inside a refrigerator, she is bound at the wrists and ankles and is in lingerie. Her face is obscured by her hair and between her leg and stomach rest two eggs. The door of the refrigerator also is lined with eggs. This image has such a high tension, between the fragile nature of the egg and the nature of the pose of the model. DeSana’s use of sexual tension, and pushing the body to its limit runs across this center gallery body of work, featuring a red room. This room plays with the idea of a dark room used to expose photos and the sexual connotation to a room lit with red light. The exhibition had such a strong layout for the first two parts and lost steam for the last part. The space was awkward and didn't quite work to end strongly with DeSanas final body of work.
-Chance Al-Hajji
Hey Chance! I thought this was a well informed and sensitive review. When Drew Sawyer (the curator) lectured on DeSana, he said he showed the early work from Atlanta in the 70s because he thought it set up a notion of thinking about the post-war suburban home as "the scene of the crime," in reference to how intense anti-queer laws were in GA at the time DeSana was growing up and going to. college. I don't know if that is helpful to you at all, but I think since you did a good job of finding parallels from his mid and later career works, it might be good continuity to connect from his early work. The quotation I used is word for word from my notes, if you feel the need to use it.
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