The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (2017) on Netflix
NR20171h 16mDocumentary
In 1980 Elsa Dorfman took up the Polaroid Land 20x24 camera. She has photographed Harvard notables, families, Beat poets and rock stars for thirty-five years, and now opens her archive.
- Netflix4.1/5
- IMDb6.7/10886 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes97%
Trailer
Plot summary
Elsa Dorfman picks through the pictures she made across a fifty-year career, starting with the black and white work of her early years. She recalls moving to New York City for a job at Grove Press, where she met Beat writers, among them Allen Ginsberg, and her return to Massachusetts to teach elementary school, where the photographer she was paired with drew her into the medium. Her portraits from the 1970s include Andrew Wylie, Anaïs Nin, W. H. Auden, Andrea Dworkin, Ed Sanders, Gail Mazur, Audre Lorde and Anne Sexton. In 1980 comes the 20x24 Large Format Polaroid, one of only five she is able to rent, and her first exposure on it shows Ginsberg holding an amaryllis. Her parents, her husband and her son also sit for the big camera.
