Jahmani Perry

Jahmani Perry is a project-driven visual artist using film, photography, and multimedia to explore, question, and celebrate the many dimensions of the human spirit and the paradoxical and conflicting nature of who we are, individually and collectively, at the complex and contradicting intersection of race, class, gender, identity, roles, nationality, and social and cultural systemic constructs.

Perry began taking photographs at thirteen when he and his younger brother traveled from Brooklyn to attend the Third Street Music School in the East Village. Jahmani was inspired to pursue a creative path because he was fascinated by the environment and his love for photography and music in the East Village during the turbulent late 60s and early 70s. Growing up the second of four boys and a second-generation Black American, whose father’s parents immigrated to America from Jamaica, W.I., in the 1920s and whose Mom also came to New York from Jamaica in the 1950s. As a Black filmmaker and photographer, Perry gained a unique cultural perspective as he navigated the different worlds in New York City as a teenager and young adult in the early and late 1970s and 1980s.

Perry attended the High School of Music and Art in Harlem as a pianist and concert violinist and graduated in 1975. Jahmani attended Pratt Institute for filmmaking and began making experimental animation films and a short documentary film, Kitty and Mark, about a husband and wife who were both professional wrestlers who lived in Hauppage, Long Island. After Pratt, Perry’s short animation film The Nightmare was selected by film curators Richard Gaugert and James Snead for their touring New American film series Recoding Blackness: The Visual Rhetoric of Black Independent Film, screening at The Whitney Museum of American Art, St. Louis Art Museum, Walker Art Center (1985). Amy Taubin also curated and screened the film at The Kitchen, NYC. It was also broadcast on PBS / Thirteen’s Independent Focus Series (1986) and screened globally at film festivals. Madonna also saw and loved The Nightmare film so much that she hired and worked with Jahmani to incorporate The Nightmare as a visual centerpiece during her Papa Don’t Preach song. The Nightmare became a part of Madonna's Who’s That Girl World Tour (1987-1988).

After working as a still photographer with Time + Life Television and several television and feature films, Jahmani received a film directing fellowship at The American Film Institute in Los Angeles. At AFI, Perry directed and produced a short narrative film, Brenda Adams, which Ossie Davis and SONY Corporation awarded a Sony Innovators Award (a.k.a. John Perry III). Perry has also directed and produced short films with Ice Cube and directed music videos with other music artists. Jahmani’s short film Why Am I A Threat?, Lollapalooza Music Festival commissioned Perry and four other filmmakers to create five short films featuring five different headline music artists featured in Lollapalooza and using poetry, music, and film as the medium of collaboration between each director and music artist. All five films were shown as a special event during Lollapalooza's 1993 twenty-city concert tour across the country.

Jahmani has also worked on various feature films, network television shows, documentaries, and documentary series with Oliver Stone (Nixon, film), Joss Whedon (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, network television series), John Dahl (The Last Seduction, film), Orlando Bagwell (Matters of Race, Were Still Here, third episode, PBS documentary series), Bill Moyers (Rikers: An American Jail, PBS documentary film), and Marc Levin (Rikers: An American Jail, PBS documentary film) (See CV below for a complete list of directing, producing, and photography credits).

From 1976 to 1986 and from 1999 to 2025, Perry has been exploring and photographing the inner landscapes of awareness, identity, and belonging within New Yorkers' diverse everyday lives and the city's shifting racial, social, and cultural landscape. In 1983, at twenty-five, Perry had a solo photography exhibition of early photographs from Asphalt Spirits NYC at Just Above Midtown / Downtown Gallery in Tribeca. Kathleen Goncharov curated his exhibition. The exhibition helped launch Perry’s thirty-five-year photographic ongoing journey, resulting in his current work-in-progress work and project, Asphalt Sprits NYC: Part I: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2025, Journey into Awakening and Remembrance, a poetic, photographic, film, and soundscape installation and photo book experience, of a photographer’s journey through the heart, soul, and mystery of the diverse human landscape and interconnections, on the unpredictable, intense and chaotic streets of the city.

A recent exhibition show at The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, highlighted this unique gallery space for Black and women artists from 1980-1986. Just Above Midtown, Changing Spaces. Oct. 9, 2022 - Feb. 18, 2023. Curator: Thomas J. Lax

https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/5078

Perry’s photographs are represented in the private collections of Keith Haring, The Buhl Collection, Andy Spade, Kurt Andersen, Marjorie and Leonard Vernon, and Anthony Edwards.

Perry is an award-winning filmmaker whose work includes writing, producing, and directing documentaries and television. In May 2019, Perry’s 1994 short film Why Am I A Threat?, featuring Ice Cube, was selected by Ashley Clark and the film curators of BAM Film (Brooklyn Academy of Music) to be included in their film series Black 90s: A Turning Point in American Cinema. Perry’s film screened alongside John Singleton’s Boyz N The Hood.

Jahmani is meeting with galleries to discuss potential upcoming shows and representation, as well as with different museum curators, and is discussing the Asphalt Spirits NYC work and the project being a photographic, film, and soundscape installation show and photo book.

Reviews / Media

 Please visit the CONTACT page for inquiries regarding:

*  Short and long-term assignments as Director / Producer / Creative Director /Associate Producer / Field Producer / Fashion, Editorial, and Documentary Photographer.

*  Photographic work acquisitions of Asphalt Spirits NYC: Part I: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2025 Journey into Awakening and Remembrance signed limited-edition prints.

*  Creative consulting and advisor on documentary films, television, and photographic projects.

*  As a sponsored artist through Fractured Atlas, sponsorships and donations can be made and will be tax deductible for Asphalt Spirits: NYC: Part I: 1976-1986 + Part II: 1999-2025 Journey into Awakening and Remembrance photographic and soundscape installation and photo book project. See the donation page for further details.

*  Available for Documentary Filmmaker, Visual Artist / Photographer speaking engagements.