SALVATION: Jimmy De Sana

A meditation on loss, death and nothingness, Salvation is a previously unpublished artist's book by Jimmy DeSana (1949–90), which he conceptualized shortly before his death from AIDS-related illness. While he was unable to fully realize Salvation in his lifetime, he dictated instructions to his longtime friend, the artist and photographer Laurie Simmons, for completing the publication on his deathbed. Due to her recuperative efforts, DeSana’s last major work is now available for the first time.

The volume displays 44 of the artist’s late photographic abstractions, images of relics, body parts, flowers and fruits altered through collage and darkroom manipulations. Both intimate and otherworldly, the works in Salvation function as a quiet counterpoint to the majority of the work generated in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which tended to favor bold political statements.