Sylvia Plachy

Sylvia Plachy (born 24 May 1943)[1] is a Hungarian-American photographer. Plachy's work has been featured in many New York City magazines and newspapers and she "was an influential staff photographer for The Village Voice."[2]
Plachy's first book, Sylvia Plachy's Unguided Tour, won the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography for best publication in 1991. Her book Self Portrait with Cows Going Home (2005) received a Golden Light Award for best book in 2004. Plachy has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship (1977), a Lucie Award (2004), and the Dr. Erich Salomon Award (2010).
Early life and education
[edit]Plachy was born in Budapest, Hungary. Her Czech Jewish mother was in hiding in fear of Nazi persecution during World War II.[3] Her father was a Hungarian Roman Catholic of aristocratic descent[citation needed] and she was raised in his faith. Plachy's family moved to New York City in 1958, two years after the Hungarian revolution, after crossing into Austria for safety, hidden in a horse-drawn cart.[2]
Plachy started photographing in 1964 "with an emphasis of recording the visual character of the city along with its diverse occupants".[4] She studied photography at the Pratt Institute in New York City, receiving her B.F.A. in 1965.[5] There she met the photographer André Kertész, who became her lifelong friend.[6]
Career
[edit]Plachy's photo essays and portraits have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, The New Yorker, Granta, Artforum, Fortune, and other publications. They have been exhibited in galleries and museums in Berlin, Budapest, Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City, Paris and Tokyo. She started working at The Village Voice in 1974.[2]
Plachy's first book was Sylvia Plachy's Unguided Tour. Her book Self Portrait with Cows Going Home (2005), is a personal history of Central Europe with photographs and text. Her other books are Red Light: Inside the Sex Industry with James Ridgeway (1996), Signs & Relics (2000), Out of the Corner of My Eye (2008) and Goings On About Town: Photographs for The New Yorker (2007). She has taught and lectured widely.
Personal life
[edit]Plachy lives in New York City with her husband, Elliot Brody, and is the mother of Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody.[4]
Publications
[edit]- Plachy, Sylvia (2007). Goings On About Town: Photographs for the New Yorker. New York: Aperture. ISBN 9781597110518.
- Plachy, Sylvia (2006). Out of the Corner of My Eye = De reojo. Madrid: Umbrage Editions. ISBN 9781884167928.
- Plachy, Sylvia (2004). Self Portrait With Cows Going Home. New York: Aperture. ISBN 9781931788434.
- Plachy, Sylvia (1999). Signs & Relics. New York: Monacelli Press. ISBN 9781580930574.
- Plachy, Sylvia; Ridgeway, James (1996). Red Light: Inside the Sex Industry. New York: Powerhouse Books. ISBN 9781576870006.
- Plachy, Sylvia; Waits, Tom (1990). Sylvia Plachy's Unguided Tour. New York: Aperture. ISBN 9780893813932.
Awards
[edit]- 1977: Guggenheim Fellowship[7]
- 1991: Publication award, Infinity Awards from the International Center of Photography, New York, for Sylvia Plachy's Unguided Tour[8]
- 2004: Lucie Award[4]
- 2005: Golden Light Award for best book, for Self Portrait with Cows Going Home[citation needed]
- 2010: Dr. Erich Salomon Award[9]
Collections
[edit]![]() | This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. (April 2025) |
Plachy's work is held in the following permanent collections:
- Museum of Modern Art, New York City
- Minneapolis Institute of Arts
- Houston Museum of Fine Arts
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
References
[edit]- ^ Sylvia Plachy Archived 2013-10-04 at the Wayback Machine Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
- ^ a b c Avedon, Elizabeth (24 February 2015). "Budapest: Sylvia Plachy at Mai Manó Haz". L'Oeil de la Photographie. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
- ^ Meyers, William (2005-01-27). "Rescuing Beauty From History's Dark Corners". The New York Sun. Retrieved 2006-12-13.
- ^ a b c "Sylvia Plachy - Lucie Awards - | Women In Photography International". www.womeninphotography.org. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
- ^ "Pratt Institute | Academics | School of Art | Undergraduate School of Art | Photography". www.pratt.edu. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
- ^ Silverman, Rena (3 March 2015). "Finding Refuge in a Visual Language". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
- ^ "Meet our Fellows - Guggenheim Fellowship — Guggenheim Fellowships: Supporting Artists, Scholars, & Scientists". Guggenheim Foundation. Retrieved 2025-04-28.
- ^ "1991 Infinity Award: Publication | 1International Center of Photography". www.icp.org. 2016-02-23. Retrieved 2025-04-28.
- ^ "The Dr. Erich Salomon Award of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh) | Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie e.V." www.dgph.de (in German). Retrieved 2025-04-28.
External links
[edit]- 1943 births
- Living people
- American people of Czech-Jewish descent
- Hungarian women artists
- The Village Voice people
- Hungarian emigrants to the United States
- Photographers from Budapest
- Photographers from New York City
- Hungarian Holocaust survivors
- Hungarian Ashkenazi Jews
- 20th-century American photographers
- 20th-century American women photographers
- 21st-century American women