THE B-SIDE: ELSA DORFMAN’S PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY B
USA (76 mi)
2016 d: Errol Morris
Errol Morris
takes a break from his big important subjects, or his examination of the
peculiarities of human behavior, and instead focuses on one of his best
friends, Elsa Dorfman, a Cambridge, Massachusetts portrait photographer who has
shot members of the director’s family 30 or 40 times, someone he has known for
more than 25 years, while her husband Harvey Silverglate, a civil rights
lawyer, is probably the director’s best friend, where they are godparents to
Morris’s son Hamilton. Be that as it
may, this is a fascinating documentary, exploring the ramifications of
photography through personalization, as Dorfman welcomes her subjects, often
photographing them with clothes or objects that they adore, such as family
pets, adding an element of positivism in her work. “I’m really interested in the surfaces of
people. I am totally not interested in capturing their souls. I’m only interested in how they seem.” Often taking a series of pictures, such as
year to year, including her own self-portraits, where there is no definitive
truth that she captures in images, but something more fleeting, more
transitory. In 1959 she left home and
moved to New York, working as a secretary at Grove Press in the heart of
Greenwich Village, which paved the way fighting legal censorship battles by
publishing D.H. Lawrence’s Lady
Chatterly’s Lover, but also Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and the William S. Burroughs novel Naked Lunch. They also published many of the Beat writers,
including Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, where she met Ginsberg as she was in
charge of the copy machine, claiming he copied everything he wrote. Some of her most famous photographs are of
Ginsberg, who loved to have his picture taken, as he was himself a
photographer, who we have to thank for the recorded images of Jack Kerouac,
Neal Cassidy, and William S. Burroughs that remain in our memories today, and
had a propensity for being photographed naked, developing a lifelong
friendship. Dorfman didn’t pick up a
camera until she was 28, returning home to Boston in the mid 70’s to pursue her
master’s degree and teach school, arranging readings in Cambridge for many of
the Beat poets, maintaining correspondence with them as they traveled the
globe, where once a year, piled into a borrowed grocery store shopping cart, she
sold snapshots of Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan in Harvard Square.
Dorfman started
out taking black-and-white photographs in the 60’s and 70’s that additionally
included such luminaries as Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Robert
Lowell, W.H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Creeley, Anne Sexton, Andrea
Dworkin, Audre Lorde, Joni Mitchell, Jonathan Richman, Julia Childs, and Anaïs
Nin, once attending a Dylan concert where cameras were routinely confiscated,
requiring the intervention of the singer himself for her to obtain a backstage
pass along with her camera. What
distinguishes Dorfman’s work is her relationship with Polaroid beginning in
1980 when she was introduced to the Polaroid 20/24, one of only six 240-pound cameras that
exist anywhere the world, producing instant prints in a large-sized format,
where the clarity and detail are reportedly unsurpassed. The first camera is located at the Film
Society of Lincoln Center in New York, the second is in San Francisco, the
third is in Prague, the fourth is in the Netherlands, the fifth is on exhibit
in the Harvard Museum of Scientific Instruments, while Dorfman owns the 6th in
Cambridge. Polaroid invited only a
select group of photographers to experiment with their cameras in exchange for donating
photographs to the Polaroid Collection.
Dorfman took thousands of oversized color portraits, usually taking two
shots, with the buyer choosing which one they want, where she has kept all the
rejected photos that she calls “The B-Side,” a riff on single music
releases. As she carefully pieces her
way through her vast archives of photographs, reading the captions that she has
written on every one, something to distinguish each from the next, she wonders
why they didn’t pick some of the rejects, as she’s certain some are vastly
superior to the ones chosen, offering a running commentary about her life along
the way, speaking tenderly about the importance of friendships, as her art is a
treasure-trove of memories. Her
assessment of her own work is brutally honest, calling a lot of it junk that
she doesn’t have the nerve to throw out, as these are the products of what will
one day be viewed as a forgotten era, as in 2008 Polaroid went out of business,
selling to a company that closed the factory and failed to preserve any of the
historic machinery that probably belongs in a scientific museum. Much of this has the feel of Herzog’s Lo
and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016), especially how enamored
the science community is about the original machine that sent the very first
Internet message, as if this was the dawn of an era. Dorfman is extremely attached to the largesse
of her craft, but has been forced to retire at the age of 79 now that they no
longer make any film for her prized camera and she has used the last of her stockpile. There’s also the question of faded
photographs, claiming some have lost a bit of their vibrancy over time, while also
declaring a delight in faded things, as their value may only increase over
time.
There is a
surprising degree of warmth in this film, especially the friendship between
Morris and his subject and the thread of Ginsberg, with Dorfman describing him
as an “omnivore,” as he devoured every subject with an extraordinary
curiosity. As they study a photograph of
Ginsberg in a suit juxtaposed against him in the nude, a practice that was
initiated not by the artist but by Ginsberg himself, she sadly acknowledges she
believes that’s the suit they buried him in.
Morris plays Dorfman’s recorded phone message from Ginsberg in the
hospital informing her of the seriousness of his illness, requesting they call
him back, one would never associate Ginsberg with using the expression
“Okey-dokey,” though there is an ominous pause as the effects of his death sink
in, where Dorfman is obviously extremely moved by the moment, showing unguarded
emotions, where she is perhaps caught off guard by Morris, who asks “Does it bring
Allen back?” “Of course,” she replies,
as photographs embody the subject, offering a poetic truth about that moment in
time, thinking “Maybe that’s when photographs have the ultimate meaning – when
the person dies,” where there is a “fugitive beauty” in the fact that the
prints themselves are also fading, where all things are perishable. All the more reason to cherish their
memories, as photographs may help extend the power of those reflections. Dorfman treats each subject with a fresh
take, and a kind of child-like innocence, taking great pleasure in making them
feel comfortable, where she can find them in happy moments. She never delves into the mystical to find
meaning behind her photographs, but is instead fascinated by what the camera
can obtain, connecting to the surfaces, including the less than perfect
moments, as even they have a tendency to humanize the subjects and make them perhaps
even more recognizable to one another. Dorfman
values existing realities, flaws and all, over some fantasized perfection that
doesn’t really exist. Dorfman claims
even Polaroid never really recognized the value in her work, placing her near
the bottom of the barrel of their selected artists, much like she endured being
under-appreciated during her stint in New York working at Grove Press, yet
somehow, modestly maintaining her own moral integrity, she survived intact with
a body of work that will only appreciate over time. Knowing this is what gives her comfort and
assurance, as she’s always had a belief in herself, even though she’s never
been showcased in the art galleries.
It’s just that now others may have a chance to discover her work on
their own, knowing that the technology is dead, give it new life by reassessing
its importance. By getting personal with
Dorfman, Morris gets profound by allowing these poster-sized photographs to
come to life and speak for themselves.
According to Morris, “Elsa has always said that that these pictures
become more and more valuable over time, and she’s absolutely right. These pictures are some of my most valued
possessions, pictures of my mother and stepfather who are dead. There is something different about these 20×24
Polaroids than a normal snapshot, it’s almost as if the person is really there,
standing next to you. While you can
take photographs on hundreds of different media, there is something about this
process that was magical and unique.”
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