Review:
"The B-Side:
Elsa Dorfman's
Portrait Photography"
Release Date: July 14, 2017
Rating: R Running Time: 76 minutes The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography is a short but sweet documentary by Errol Morris that pays tribute to an art-form that has all but died. His subject, photographer Elsa Dorfman, spent most of her career taking portraits using a Polaroid 20x24 instant camera to create large prints. She was forced to abandon her beloved vocation a year after Polaroid went bankrupt in 2008 and stopped making its instant film products. “When I was on the 20x24, I was like the most excited person in the world,” Dorfman exclaims. “I had never dreamt for the next 30 years that’s what I would be doing.” The film’s title refers to Dorfman’s vinyl record-borrowed term for the photographs her clients choose not to purchase (they had their pick of one of two portraits taken by Dorfman). Being the true artist that she is, Dorfman expresses fondness for the rejected photos and the so-called flaws that make them more interesting in her keen eye that the portraits purchased by her clients. Morris reveals great affection for Dorfman as she recalls her unexpected entry into photography—she was an Educational Development Corporation employee who was handed a camera by a photographer and told to use it. She discusses her approach to portrait photography with matter-of-fact candor. “I’m really interested in the surfaces of people. I am totally not interested in capturing their souls. I am only interested in how they seem,” Dorfman explains. She also believes that her desire to photograph her subjects at their happiest did not enhance her reputation because her photos were simply “too sunny” for critical dissection. Dorfman’s most famous subject was Beat Generation poet Allen Ginsberg. She movingly recollects her relationship with Ginsberg and how she learned of his death in 1997, which clearly still haunts her. “Maybe that’s when the photographs have their ultimate meaning … when the person dies,” she reflects soon after Morris airs Ginsberg’s last voicemail to Dorfman days before his death. She sheds less tears for the demise of Polaroid, which ultimately led to her retirement and an archive she doesn’t know what to do with. Still, there’s a wistfulness in Dorfman’s voice as she holds up a large print of her late friend Allen Ginsberg and proclaims, “There’ll never be film like this again.” Nor will there be a photographer like Dorfman again. Robert Sims Aired: July 20, 2017 Web site: http://bsidefilm.com |
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