Opening at The Ross on Friday, August 4, “The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography” offers an intriguing glimpse at a distinctive artist's work that's as warmly engaging as its subject.
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 American film director of documentaries, an inside tour of her backyard archive.
In The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman’s Portrait Photography, Errol Morris explores the life of a gifted analog photographer facing a digital present. Dorfman, with whimsical charm and wit, gives her longtime friend a tour of her backyard garage-turned-archive.
The B-Side is a loving portrait of a unique artist too often overlooked in considerations of 20th century photography. It revels in the intimate beauty of Dorfman’s portraits and in her singular appreciation for the ordinary aspects of human life. As photographs begin to fade and Dorfman’s retirement looms, Morris’s film reminds us of a bygone era of analog photography and the extraordinary life of one of its champions.
Friends of the Ross Media Arts Center offers a discount for a new, first-time membership . Contact Friends of Ross Media Arts Center at 402-472-9100.
More information about the film, show dates and times at https://theross.org/movie/962/