Plachy will walk through the exhibition and talk about her photographs on Thursday, Feb. 1, at 6 p.m. starting in the grand lobby of Central Library. The program is free, but reservations are recommended.

Sylvia Plachy, born in Budapest, lives in New York. She has had one-person shows at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Whitney Museum at Philip Morris in New York, the Queens Museum, The Radvila Palace Museum of Art in Vilnius, Photo España, Madrid, Museo di Roma in Trastevere, and in galleries in Homer, Budapest, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, New York, Manchester, Arles, Perpingnon and Pingyau.

For thirty years (1974-2004) she was a photographer at The Village Voice, where she had a weekly column, “Unguided Tour,” and where she became staff photographer, reporting nationally and internationally.  She also had a column for several years in Metropolis magazine (“Signs and Relics”) and was a contributing photographer at the New Yorker. Her photographs have appeared in the New York Times, Fortune, ArtForum, Granta, Grand Street, New York Magazine and in many other magazines. She is a Guggenheim fellow and the recipient of Lucie Award. Her photographs are held in collections including the MoMA, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum, and the High Museum.

Ms. Plachy has had six books published: “Signs And Relics,” 2000; “Red Light,” 1996; “Unguided Tour,” 1990, winner of the Infinity Award for best publication; “Self Portrait With Cows Going Home,” 2004, winner of the Golden Light Award for best book; “De Reojo/Out Of The Corner Of My Eye,” 2007; and “Goings On About Town,” 2007, a collection from photographs in the New Yorker column.

Ms. Plachy was a legacy photographer at the Look3 Festival in the summer of 2009 in Charlottesville. On Feb. 6, 2010, Sylvia Plachy was given the Dr. Erich Salomon award by the German Society for Photography (DGPh). This prestigious prize is given for “lifetime achievement” in photojournalism.

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