The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography

Errol Morris
2017-06-30

The camera is magic
6.8
76 min

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.

Cast

Name Character Team
Elsa Dorfman Self Unowned
Errol Morris Self Unowned
Allen Ginsberg Self (archive footage) Unowned
W.H. Auden Self (archive footage) Unowned
Joni Mitchell Self (archive footage) Unowned
Bob Dylan Self (archive footage) Unowned
Anaïs Nin Self (archive footage) Unowned
Andrea Dworkin Self (archive footage) Unowned
Andrew Wylie Self (archive footage) Unowned
Victor Bockris Self (archive footage) Unowned
Gail Mazur Self (archive footage) Unowned
Harvey Silverglate Self (archive footage) Unowned
Audre Lorde Self (archive footage) Unowned
Anne Sexton Self (archive footage) Unowned
Peter Orlovsky Self (archive footage) Unowned
Jack Elliott Self (archive footage) Unowned
Ed Sanders Self (archive footage) Unowned