This work 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.
Running, Falling, Flying, Floating, Crawling is a loose compendium of photographs and texts that picture, examine, explore, and / or suggest the human body in states of abandon, helplessness, terror, subjugation, serenity, and transcendence. Artists include Andre Kertesz, Yves Klein, Laurie Simmons, Maya Deren, Gideon Mendel, Bas Jan Ader, Chris Burden, Tabitha Soren, Nan Goldin, Rania Matar, John Divola, Harry Callahan, Sarah Charlesworth, and Francesca Woodman. Writers include David Campany, Lynne Tillman, Jennifer Blessing, Diane Seuss, Susan Bright, Gilda Williams, Marvin Heiferman, Maud Casey, and Carol Mavor.
This surreally lyrical, sexually charged book collects Jimmy DeSana's earlier work, made from 1980 to 1983. For his series Suburban, DeSana staged photos of nude subjects in various evocative poses, entwined with everyday objects and lit with gel-covered tungsten lights. Rather than constructing a space, the "suburban" was a place of examining stereotypes and norms. Of this series, DeSana told Laurie Simmons, his contemporary and longtime roommate, "I don't really think of that work as erotic. 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. Particularly in that period, but that is the way the suburbs are in a sense." Interest in DeSana is at a renewed high: Salon 94 represents his estate and mounted a well-received exhibition in 2012, and art and photography from the early 1980s is enjoying a renaissance across all media. There is a special interest now in queer artists and the legacy of a generation destroyed by AIDS, with regard to contemporary photography and queer culture and Jimmy DeSana: Suburban is an essential contribution to this evolving canon.
This winter, Aperture magazine presents an issue that celebrates the dynamic visions of Latinx photography across the United States. Guest edited by Pilar Tompkins Rivas, chief curator at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, "Latinx" spans a century of image making, connecting historical and contemporary photography, and covering the themes of political resistance, family and community, fashion and culture, and the complexity of identity in American life. In "Latinx," Carribean Fragoza traces Laura Aguilar's influence on queer artmaking. Joiri Minaya remixes postcards from the Dominican Republic to unveil the fantasy of tourism. Christina Catherine Martinez profiles Reynaldo Rivera, who chronicled 1990s-era Los Angeles nightlife. Yxta Maya Murry considers three Latina curators and writers influencing how photography canons are made today. "Collectively, their images cast a greater net for the multiple ways of seeing Latinx people," Tompkins Rivas notes of the issue's photographers, "creating a visual archive whose edges are yet to be defined."