Asphalt Spirits NYC
Journey into Awakening and Remembrance
Part I: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2026
Asphalt Spirits NYC Part I: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2026, A Journey into Awakening and Remembrance is a ongoing poetic photographic work and developing photographic, film and soundscape installation and photo book by award-winning filmmaker Jahmani Perry. This body of work explores the many dimensions of the human spirit and the everyday interior and communal lives of New Yorkers navigating the city’s unpredictable and chaotic streets. The images serve as both inquiry and celebration — honoring the diverse beauty, mystery, vitality, vulnerability, joy, and paradoxical nature of life in New York. Created within the context of a nation challenged and actively struggling to sustain its moral center, uphold its democratic ideals, and find a new path forward. The work and project probes the deep emotional ties between the heart, soul, and intimate lived experiences of New Yorkers across decades, reflecting on transformation - personal and collective, where race, class, gender, identity, wealth, power, and culture intersect and collide.
Jahmani’s photographs reflect the perspective of a curious and mindful filmmaker, photographer, and storyteller. His work is both a photographic investigation and spiritual journey. In his images, he presents a different, an inner world of New York, where the noise and chaos fade out and the transcending encounters become clear. As Jahmani reflects: I grew up on the streets and grit of Brooklyn and the city. This work has been and continues to be an incredible awakening journey and exploration—an unfolding meditation on the vibrancy, resilience, and presence of this remarkable city and its people. Walking and photographing on the streets for over thirty years, remains a practice in stillness, trust, and being present to the different rhythms of the moment. Being a witness with an open heart, has allowed me to see, experience, discover and appreciate a larger perspective, and context, revealing the richness and sacred interconnection of nature, humanity and life.
Asphalt Spirits NYC Part I: 1976–1986, shot on Kodachrome and Tri-X film, captures people’s everyday lives amidst a bygone New York—on the edge of collapse, gripped by violence, homelessness, drug addiction, and the AIDS crisis, and deep racial tensions and class divides. Amid this turmoil, the raw energy of hip-hop, punk, and street art emerged alongside rising gentrification, greed, and cultural transformation. In contrast, Asphalt Spirits NYC Part II: 1999-2026 reflects a transformed New York, where beauty, wealth, poverty and complexity now collide in sharper, more urgent contrast. Together, they are an ode to two distinct eras of New York, each alive with movement, resilience, and self-reflection.
In this uncertain and tumultuous moment—here in America and across the world—Asphalt Spirits NYC Part I: 1976–1986 and Part II: 1999–2026, offers a visual and experiential space to reflect on the beauty, mystery and complex tensions of our shared humanity. The work illuminates the different layers of reality from our individual and collective experiences from the past and present, revealing what binds us across time and what we are passing on to future generations.
Julian Cox, Chief Curator and Deputy Director at the Art Gallery of Ontario and former photography curator at various museums in America and Europe, said of Perry’s work, His photographs are intimate, thoughtful fragments, lovingly wrested from the buzz and hum of daily life in New York. A still quiet pervades these pictures, achieved through a subtly anonymous stance developed and known. The photographs are poignant and demonstrate his desire to show the intricate links of the visual drama surrounding and connecting us all. Perry is a storyteller whose photographs have the broad, resonant structure of elemental tales. As an installation and published monograph photo book, Asphalt Spirits NYC Part: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2026 would make an important addition to the field.
Asphalt Spirits NYC, the first solo exhibition of this ongoing series, was shown at Just Above Midtown /Downtown Gallery, New York, NY, Curator: Linda Goode Bryant (1983). This show was recently mentioned in curator, Thomas Lax’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA, 2022) Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces show catalog, under Jahmani’s a.k.a John Perry III, Recent Photographs. This MoMA exhibition celebrated the landmark influence of Just Above Midtown Gallery (JAM) on New York City’s art scene in the 1980s and beyond.
For more information about Asphalt Spirits NYC Part I: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2026 projects, don't hesitate to get in touch with Jahmani Perry, email: jahmaniperry@yahoo.com