Jimmy DeSana Submission (1980) photobook, front cover.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: torso and legs in sheer tights pulled to the waist, an object pressed beneath the fabric.
Black-and-white photograph from Submission: figure in high heels on all fours on a carpet before a white sofa, one leg extended.
Staged photograph from Submission by Jimmy DeSana: hooded figure in a dark shirt seated beside a chair, hard flash light.
Photograph from Submission: figure curled inside an open refrigerator, shelves removed, door swung wide.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: nude figure lying on a stone ledge by an iron railing above the sea, a cord tied at the ankle.
Photograph from Submission: close-up of a torso with clothespins clipped to a white undershirt, hands at the chest.
Jimmy DeSana Submission (1980) photobook, front cover.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: torso and legs in sheer tights pulled to the waist, an object pressed beneath the fabric.
Black-and-white photograph from Submission: figure in high heels on all fours on a carpet before a white sofa, one leg extended.
Staged photograph from Submission by Jimmy DeSana: hooded figure in a dark shirt seated beside a chair, hard flash light.
Photograph from Submission: figure curled inside an open refrigerator, shelves removed, door swung wide.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: nude figure lying on a stone ledge by an iron railing above the sea, a cord tied at the ankle.
Photograph from Submission: close-up of a torso with clothespins clipped to a white undershirt, hands at the chest.
Jimmy DeSana Submission (1980) photobook, front cover.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: torso and legs in sheer tights pulled to the waist, an object pressed beneath the fabric.
Black-and-white photograph from Submission: figure in high heels on all fours on a carpet before a white sofa, one leg extended.
Staged photograph from Submission by Jimmy DeSana: hooded figure in a dark shirt seated beside a chair, hard flash light.
Photograph from Submission: figure curled inside an open refrigerator, shelves removed, door swung wide.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: nude figure lying on a stone ledge by an iron railing above the sea, a cord tied at the ankle.
Photograph from Submission: close-up of a torso with clothespins clipped to a white undershirt, hands at the chest.
Jimmy DeSana Submission (1980) photobook, front cover.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: torso and legs in sheer tights pulled to the waist, an object pressed beneath the fabric.
Black-and-white photograph from Submission: figure in high heels on all fours on a carpet before a white sofa, one leg extended.
Staged photograph from Submission by Jimmy DeSana: hooded figure in a dark shirt seated beside a chair, hard flash light.
Photograph from Submission: figure curled inside an open refrigerator, shelves removed, door swung wide.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: nude figure lying on a stone ledge by an iron railing above the sea, a cord tied at the ankle.
Photograph from Submission: close-up of a torso with clothespins clipped to a white undershirt, hands at the chest.
Jimmy DeSana Submission (1980) photobook, front cover.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: torso and legs in sheer tights pulled to the waist, an object pressed beneath the fabric.
Black-and-white photograph from Submission: figure in high heels on all fours on a carpet before a white sofa, one leg extended.
Staged photograph from Submission by Jimmy DeSana: hooded figure in a dark shirt seated beside a chair, hard flash light.
Photograph from Submission: figure curled inside an open refrigerator, shelves removed, door swung wide.
Jimmy DeSana photograph from Submission: nude figure lying on a stone ledge by an iron railing above the sea, a cord tied at the ankle.
Photograph from Submission: close-up of a torso with clothespins clipped to a white undershirt, hands at the chest.

JIMMY DE SANA — SUBMISSION

$ 6,500.00 MXN
$ 6,500.00 MXN
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Photographs: Jimmy DeSana
Introduction: William S. Burroughs
Book Design: Paula Greif
Publisher: FEY Verlag, Stuttgart
Year: 1980
Dimensions: 27 x 21.7 cm
Edition: First Edition — European Imprint
Language: English / German
Format: Softcover
Pages: 66 
ISBN: 3-88361-103-4
Condition: Fine — exceptionally well preserved, with only very minor imperfections to the cover and a barely visible mark at the upper right corner.

Submission collects Jimmy DeSana’s staged black-and-white photographs made in New York between 1977 and 1978, introduced by William S. Burroughs in a publication situated between the literary underground and the downtown art world of the late 1970s.

DeSana (1949–1990) was a key figure within New York’s East Village punk and No Wave milieu, photographing musicians, artists, and the broader downtown scene. With Submission, however, his attention turns decisively toward the body itself, constructing a series of staged photographs in which nudity, bondage, and S&M become both subject and visual language.

The photographs move between the explicitly physical and the symbolic. DeSana’s controlled compositions transform the body into an architectural and psychological object, using restraint, concealment, repetition, and unusual positioning to create images that are as concerned with abstraction and formal tension as they are with eroticism.

Brooks Adams credited the publication with helping usher in the confrontational, often homoerotic S&M photography that would become increasingly visible during the 1980s. Burroughs’ introduction further situates the work within a larger underground network in which literature, sexuality, photography, and downtown art culture intersected.

This copy is the 1980 European first-edition imprint published by FEY Verlag in Stuttgart and printed in Germany, featuring bilingual English and German text and design by Paula Greif. Published under the name Jimmy de Sana, the volume has long been out of print and has become an important document of DeSana’s contribution to the visual culture of postwar New York.

The work returned to renewed attention with DeSana’s first museum retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum in 2022–2023, further establishing Submission as a significant publication within the history of experimental photography, queer visual culture, and the downtown New York underground.

Intermission exists in the space between documentation and devotion an ongoing archive of cultural fragments that refuse to vanish. Each title within our portfolio is selected not for trend, but for tension: between what was meant to disappear and what insists on remaining.

We work with objects that speak quietly but persistently publications, recordings, and editions that define the undercurrents of art, sound, and design. Together they form a living record of marginal brilliance, a collection that privileges significance over scale.

Every Intermission title is handled as an artifact. We believe that preservation is an act of reverence one that begins the moment you open a cover or unspool a tape.

To experience a piece, do so slowly. Allow the air to touch the paper, let light fall softly over each page. Avoid excess pressure; handle edges rather than surfaces. Each mark, fold, or patina is part of its passage through time evidence of care rather than decay.

We encourage collectors to engage not only with the content, but with the gesture of preservation itself: a quiet commitment to memory.

Jimmy DeSana Submission (1980) photobook, front cover.

JIMMY DE SANA — SUBMISSION

$ 6,500.00 MXN
$ 6,500.00 MXN

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ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE - ALTARS

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