Asphalt Spirits NYC
Journey into Awakening and Remembrance
Part I: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2025
“Finding yourself is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.”
-Emily McDowell, writer and illustrator
Asphalt Spirits NYC, Part I: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2025 A Journey into Awakening and Remembrance, is a poetic photographic work and work-in-progress immersive photographic, film, and soundscape installation and photo book by award-winning filmmaker Jahmani Perry (Sony Innovators Award, a.k.a. John Perry III), chronicling New York City and its people. The images are a meditation and celebration on the diverse beauty, mystery, and aliveness within the everyday lives and clashing realities of New Yorkers, navigating a city in constant transformation at the complex intersection of race, class, gender, identity, wealth, power, and social and cultural labeling and conditioning.
Perry has spent most of his life in New York City, photographing from 1976–1986 + 1999–2025 (with a filmmaking period in L.A. from 1987–1998). His work is both a photographic and spiritual journey—Perry reflects, ‘This has been an incredible photographic journey—an unfolding meditation on the vibrancy, frugality and presence of this remarkable city and its people. Walking its streets became a daily practice in stillness and trust, revealing both the fleeting richness of life and the deeper, often unseen truths woven into one of the world’s most ethnically and culturally diverse urban landscapes.’
Asphalt Spirits NYC Part I: 1976–1986, shot on Kodachrome and Tri-X film, captures a bygone New York—on the edge of collapse, gripped by violence, the AIDS crisis, and deep racial and class divides. Amid this turmoil, the raw energy of hip-hop, punk, and street art emerged alongside rising gentrification, greed, and cultural transformation.
Asphalt Spirits NYC Parts I: 1976–1986 + Part II: 1999–2025 is an ode to two distinct eras of New York, each alive with movement, resilience, and creative fire. The images are mirrors and questions, revealing layered, often untold stories that define and shape who we are. Asphalt Spirits NYC Part I: 1976-1986 captures a city raw and unraveling; Asphalt Spirits Part II: 1999-2025 reflects a transformed New York, where beauty and complexity now collide in sharper, more urgent contrast.
How can we begin to see ourselves in a different light by reconnecting with our true selves and recognizing the power we share through our human connection?
What is it we long for — in ourselves, in this body, in this life, in this fleeting moment?
How might we heal, transform, and thrive in the kind of city, country, and world Dr. King envisioned — a “Beloved Community” rooted in compassion, understanding, and loving-kindness? A world where Black and Brown lives matter, where the Earth is honored, and where equality, democracy, and sustainability allow all beings to flourish.
In this turbulent and uncertain moment—both in America and across the world—Asphalt Spirits NYC Part I: 1976–1986 + Part II: 1999–2025 offers a visual and emotional invitation to enter a sacred space, and a deeper awareness of our tender humanity. This photographic work reflects the layered dimensions of our shared grace and connection, illuminating a past, present, and future that express and reimagine the timeless essence of who we are and what binds us.
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 stilled 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: 1999-2025 would make an important addition to the field.”
For more information about Asphalt Spirits NYC Part I: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2025 projects, don't hesitate to get in touch with Jahmani Perry, email: jahmaniperry@yahoo.com