Sylvia Plachy

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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]

Contents

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

Plachy was born in Budapest, Hungary. Her Czech Jewish Hungarian 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. She lost most of her relatives to the Holocaust. [4] 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". [5] She studied photography at the Pratt Institute in New York City, receiving her B.F.A. in 1965. [6] There she met the photographer André Kertész, who became her lifelong friend. [7]

Career

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

Plachy lives in New York City with her husband, Elliot Brody, and is the mother of two time Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody. [5]

Publications

Awards

Collections

Plachy's work is held in the following permanent collections:

References

  1. ↑ Sylvia Plachy Archived 2013-10-04 at the Wayback Machine Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
  2. 1 2 3 Avedon, Elizabeth (24 February 2015). "Budapest: Sylvia Plachy at Mai Manó Haz". L'Oeil de la Photographie. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  3. ↑ Meyers, William (2005-01-27). "Rescuing Beauty From History's Dark Corners". The New York Sun. Retrieved 2006-12-13.
  4. ↑ Julie Jordan (January 16, 2025). "Adrien Brody Says His Role in The Brutalist Mirrored His Mom's Life: 'She Has Been a Constant Inspiration' (Exclusive)". People . People.com. Retrieved June 15, 2025.
  5. 1 2 3 "Sylvia Plachy - Lucie Awards - | Women In Photography International". www.womeninphotography.org. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  6. ↑ "Pratt Institute | Academics | School of Art | Undergraduate School of Art | Photography". www.pratt.edu. Retrieved 2021-05-13.
  7. ↑ Silverman, Rena (3 March 2015). "Finding Refuge in a Visual Language". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 October 2015.
  8. ↑ "Meet our Fellows - Guggenheim Fellowship — Guggenheim Fellowships: Supporting Artists, Scholars, & Scientists". Guggenheim Foundation. Retrieved 2025-04-28.
  9. ↑ "1991 Infinity Award: Publication | 1International Center of Photography". www.icp.org. 2016-02-23. Retrieved 2025-04-28.
  10. ↑ "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.
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