SYLVIA PLACHY’S UNGUIDED TOUR
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Often she captures a particular moment so private you wonder how and why the subjects allowed her to photograph them. You marvel at the poetry of that personal instant so intense it becomes not only universal but, crossing back on itself, even more poignantly personal. Being at the right place at the right time is one thing, but being allowed entry into that esoteric moment that reveals the innermost self is another. How, for example, did she get the couple in Backseat, obviously entangled in a moment of intense lust, to “pose”? Or allow themselves to be photographed? Perhaps they simply didn’t notice her. Or perhaps the moment of faceless passion–only their bodies are visible against the blur of the backseat window–seemed anonymous enough to be innocuous. Or perhaps they wanted their love immortalized. Gradually a stream of “logical” answers develops–yet however many answers may come to us, they’re never as intense as that initial “ahhh” of astonishment: however did she capture this special moment, at the apex of privacy?
In Plachy’s portrait close-ups, the thoughts and dreams of her subjects seem almost emblazoned on their foreheads. Chow Sao-Lin, Beijing Opera Star offers a face so furrowed with emotion it reads nearly like a script, and seems to have the same cathartic potential. Film star Isabelle Hupert’s mysterious calm in the face of the wind that flattens her hair across one cheek is full of unanswered questions. Miraculously, in this 1986 portrait Plachy has also managed to capture ghostly reflections like flickering film images in the actress’s sunglasses.
Quadruplets on Broadway exposes differences amid apparent similarities. This is really a portrait of twins each holding a doll almost as large as they are. All four behind the bar of their carriage look as if they’re imprisoned; the dolls’ bald heads are like a revelation of the bald baby heads underneath their bonnets. The doll on the left gazes upward like the open-eyed (albeit sleepy) baby who holds her; the doll on the right faces the other way, looking downward as the baby does who holds her, though that baby’s eyes are closed. Other images are equally funny but seem almost lyrically “choreographed.” A simply beautiful moment of movement can have the staged quality of dance: the running girl in Agi or the two “flying” bikers in Wild Bike or Tom Waits pretending to be a toreador, posed as gracefully as a dancer (the characteristic deep, rasping voice seems in complete contrast).
