The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography

The camera is magic

Portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman found her medium in 1980: the larger-than-life Polaroid Land 20x24 camera. For the next thirty-five years, she captured the “surfaces” of those who visited her studio: families, Beat poets, rock stars, and Harvard notables. As pictures begin to fade and her retirement looms, Dorfman gives Errol Morris an inside tour of her backyard archive.

Documentary

Elsa Dorfman

(Self)

Errol Morris

(Self)

Allen Ginsberg

(Self (archive footage))

W.H. Auden

(Self (archive footage))

Joni Mitchell

(Self (archive footage))

Bob Dylan

(Self (archive footage))

Anaïs Nin

(Self (archive footage))

Andrea Dworkin

(Self (archive footage))

Andrew Wylie

(Self (archive footage))

Victor Bockris

(Self (archive footage))

Gail Mazur

(Self (archive footage))

Harvey Silverglate

(Self (archive footage))

Audre Lorde

(Self (archive footage))

Anne Sexton

(Self (archive footage))

Peter Orlovsky

(Self (archive footage))

Jack Elliott

(Self (archive footage))

Ed Sanders

(Self (archive footage))