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JIMMY DESANA (1949-1990) Masking Tape, from the series Submission. Silver print, the image measuring 9⅝x6¾ inches (24.4x17.1 cm.), the sheet slightly larger, with the Jimmy DeSana Trust stamp with Executor Laurie Simmons' signature and the copyright date in ink, and the title, notation 2/20, and date also in ink, on verso. 1978-79
Throughout his career, DeSana produced imagery informed by and exploring S&M culture, often using both his own body as subject (most notably an infamous self-portrait as a hanged man). While other artists also used S&M imagery in their work, DeSana's imagery interrogated the intersection of the body, desire, and sexuality alongside consumer and suburban culture in new ways that were both witty and playful as well as dramatic and tension filled. In the late 1979s DeSana collaborated with a dominatrix named Terence Sellers, photographing her practicing S&M with consenting clients. However, while the images made with Sellers were collaborative in nature, in his series "Submission" DeSana here took the theme to new realms, choosing to compose his images in a heightened theatrical and performative mode, using posed and sometimes contorted bodies. He positioned his figures within suburban environments, a theme taken up and developed throughout his career, and titled the works to reflect the setting, rather than the sex act depicted. DeSana's examination of S&M culture considers the relationship between domestic interiors and desire as well as the tension inherent in the practice, "the paradox of wanting and not wanting," as William Burroughs wrote in his introduction to Submission.
Reproduced: Drew Sawyer, Submission (Brooklyn Museum, 2022), p. 95 (here it is dated 1977-78)
