Goings On About Town: Photographs for The New Yorker

81 four-color and black-and-white images

For a little over a year, and conceived as part of The New Yorker’s redesign of its front section in 2005, Sylvia Plachy was the first photographer ever to be assigned to shoot the opening photograph of the essential Goings On About Town section of the legendary magazine.

From the Mermaid Parade on Coney Island to Forest Park in Queens, and from backstage to center stage, in Goings On About Town, Plachy explores the city’s dynamics from the inside out, revealing the vital and at times wacky creativity that energizes New York around the clock. In doing so, she presents hidden gems that we might otherwise never get to see up close, such as Macy’s workshop in New Jersey for the annual Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Plachy’s particular humor and way of looking feels particularly suited to these assignments. Almost entirely in color, this volume also includes some images that have never been published. Joyful and idiosyncratic, Goings On About Town is quintessentially Sylvia Plachy, and quintessentially New York.