Sylvia Plachy

Sylvia Plachy

Sylvia Plachy (born 1943) is a Hungarian/American photographer.

Plachy was born in Budapest, Hungary. Her Czech Jewish mother was in hiding in fear of Nazi persecution during World War II. Her father was a Hungarian Roman Catholic aristocrat and she was raised in his faith.

Plachy's family moved to New York City due to the Hungarian Revolution. There she met the photographer Andre Kertesz. 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, Paris and Tokyo.

Sylvia Plachy's book, Self Portrait with Cows Going Home (2005), is a personal history of Central Europe with photographs and text, received a Golden Light Award for best book in 2004. Her first book, Sylvia Plachy's Unguided Tour, won the Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography for best publication in 1991.

Her other books are Red Light: Inside the Sex Industry with James Ridgeway (1996), Signs & Relics (2000) and Goings On About Town: Photographs for The New Yorker (2007). Plachy has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lucie Award (2004). She has taught and lectured widely.

Plachy lives in New York City with her husband and is the mother of Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody.

External links

• Audio interview with the artist; and photographs by the artist
• Self Portrait with Cows Going Home book
• photos from Style series
• Sylvia Plachy's web site