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 Cambridge, Massachusetts 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.
A peacefully satisfying and nicely edited off-camera interview which reveals the life and life's work of a portrait photographer, most of whose work was uniquely captured using one of the 5 (or so) huge 20x24 inch Polaroid cameras. Her portrait sittings consisted of two poses, and having lovingly saved the print not chosen/purchased by each client, she reflects on these 'b- side' but powerful images beginning in the early 70's of everyday people, a few of the famous, and many of herself and her family.
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A peacefully satisfying and nicely edited off-camera interview which reveals the life and life's work of a portrait photographer, most of whose work was uniquely captured using one of the 5 (or so) huge 20x24 inch Polaroid cameras. Her portrait sittings consisted of two poses, and having lovingly saved the print not chosen/purchased by each client, she reflects on these 'b- side' but powerful images beginning in the early 70's of everyday people, a few of the famous, and many of herself and her family.