The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography

The camera is magic

6.8

24 votes

2017

1h 16m

Documentary

Overview

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.

Directed by Errol Morris