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0n the road
Sue Wilson takes a trip with Village Voice photographer Sylvia Plachy.
Possibly the least predictable of all art forms. photo-journalism depends on an alchemic combination of luck. instinct and reflex to transcend the divisions between the functional and
the aesthetic. The immediacy of the medium. the
ability of the camera in the field to capture and express a moment. a mood. a movement. has enabled it to produce many of the great iconic images of our time. At its best. journalistic photography possesses a vigour and dynamism often lacking in studio shots. a sense of something crystallised yet still alive and kicking inside the frame. Sylvia Plachy‘s work contains such vitality in abundance. together with a subtle but pervasive sense of a humane. humorous intelligence at work behind the lens.
Photo-columnist for the Village Voice since 1982. Plachy emigrated to the US after being forced to leave her native Hungary following the revolution of 1956; an experience both devastating and pivotal. ‘Losses and gains.‘ she writes. ‘like waves. toss you until a big one comes along with the power to stun. to leave you speechless and driven to find a voice that will release the pain. For me. leaving Hungary . . . was such a loss. I had a day‘s notice to say good-bye and fill up with all that I loved in my first thirteen years. I looked around me with the intensity of the dying.‘
Uprooted. Plachy began taking pictures as a way of getting a fix on her bewildering new existence. ‘Mute. and not comprehending the languages around me. I tried to connect with the world through my eyes. I sketched and hoped to be an artist. and then I found photography. The camera was the armour I needed. it shielded my timidity, gave me an excuse to stare. and allowed me to enter unimaginable worlds. from where I could return with mementoes.‘
(iuy Treblay. senior editor at the Village Voice. sees Plachy‘s refugee experience as having left her with a blithely insouciant attitude to fate. evinced in an unthinking readiness to take risks in order to get the shots. ‘More than once it has occurred to me that. when you are smuggled out of a Stalinist country in the bottom of a farm cart. covered with corn. at age thirteen. you have the sense that the worst has already happened.‘ he says. ‘You could look at her gameness as a kind of hubris. Or as I prefer to. you could think of her as blessed.‘
(‘ertainly there is a wonderful feeling of serendipity about Plachy‘s ability to capture a fleeting. flashing instant with extraordinary clarity and precision. ln ‘Lasker‘s Pool‘. two teenagers topple. him pulling her. backwards and laughing towards the water. caught and poised at the point of no return. The feverish essence of teenage lust is framed in ‘Backseat’; entwined urgent bodies.
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66 The List 20 December 1991- 16 January 1992
steamed—up windows. a hand fumbling with a bra-strap. ln ‘Mugged‘. the victim sits dazed in her kitchen. the only still point in a room suddenly filled with policean asking questions. making notes. talking into radios.
Tom Waits was so impressed by Plachy's work that he composed a musical accompaniment
‘The camera was the armour I needed, it shielded my timidity, gave me an excuse to stare.’
Plachy‘s ‘Unguided Tour' takes us from New York to Hungary. via Nicaragua. ltaly. Paris and other stopping points. setting up a series of gentle contrasts between the Old World and the New. There are also a number of skilful portraits. including an inscrutable Tom Waits. a lugubrious William Burroughs and a gravely venerable Andre Kertesz. Plachy‘s mentor. Waits. incidentally. was so impressed by Plachy‘s work that he composed a musical accompaniment. evocative of an eccentric and somewhat melancholy East European carousel.
The images can be demonstrative as well as illustrative; ‘Social Realism‘ depicts a determined toddler clambering with babyish clumsiness onto the pedestal of a massively striding (‘ommunist statue; ‘Flea Market Vendor‘s Daughter‘ finds a small girl huddled miserably beneath a stall table. surrounded by the flotsam and jetsam of her mother‘s trade. including a crude porno-fantasy painting of a naked woman. Others capture lighter moments; a disgruntled safari park monkey glowering in at the occupants of a car from its position on the roof: a deranged-looking horse baring its teeth in a manic grin at the camera.
The resonance of Plachy‘s work. its vivid evocation of sights. sounds. atmospheres and personalities. involves the viewer so intimately that it‘s easy to forget how most of these pictures were taken: on assignment. on the hoof. working to a deadline. When you do remember. it makes the achievement seem even more impressive. Unguided Tour: Photographs by Sylvia Plachy is at the Street Level gallery, Glasgow. until 12 Jan. An accompanying book of Plachy's work is published by Cornerhouse at £17.50.
0N FOLLOWING PAGES: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY 0 369 O COLLINS GALLERY