If you’re a retro-photographer, if you wake up in the middle of the night ruing the failure of Polaroid, you may wish to see The B-Side: Elsea Dorfman’s Portrait Photography (2017). A photographer starting in the 1950s, she took traditional dark room photos but also worked with Polaroids, including using Polaroid’s second largest camera, the 20×24 Polaroid Land Camera, and apparently the largest, the 40×84, which was a camera the size of a room.
This is an extended reminisce as she retrieves photos she hasn’t viewed in decades to show the interviewer, the off-camera Errol Morris., and they ramble from topic to topic, from her atypical young adulthood to her connection with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg to her own ruminations on her goals and the internal forces which compelled her to take up the camera. To a great extent, though, to borrow someone’s phrase, this is “dancing about architecture.” It’s clear this was her life’s work, and it made her very happy, but the exact reason for clicking the shutter is not clear.
My Arts Editor said it was like visiting with your grandmother when she drags out the photo-album, and she means that in a good way. The pictures are often interesting and her gentle viewpoint often cogent.
If you’re looking for something out of the ordinary, no guns firing, no angry confrontations, just someone talking about an important art form, you could do worse than Elsa.
