The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography (2017) Plot Summary Explained

Elsa Dorfman's entry into photography came through a chance professional encounter. While teaching elementary school in Massachusetts, a photographer was assigned to work with her, and that collaboration sparked a lifelong passion for the medium. This unexpected introduction redirected her career from teaching toward the portrait work that would define the next fifty years of her life, and it forms the emotional starting point of The B-Side.

Foreshadowing: Her earlier time at Grove Press had already placed her in creative literary circles, quietly laying the groundwork for the artistic life she would later embrace.

• elsa dorfman
• photography career
• teaching
• massachusetts
• photographer assignment
• portrait photography

The 20x24 Polaroid was central to Dorfman's artistic identity because it produced enormous instant prints that no other camera could match at that scale. When Polaroid released the camera in 1980, it gave her a uniquely direct, large-format medium that aligned perfectly with her desire to capture presence and intimacy. Dorfman eventually rented one of only five existing units and built her most recognizable body of work around the results.

Foreshadowing: Her years of small-format portrait work in the 1970s had already pushed her toward wanting a more physically commanding image, a desire the 20x24 would finally satisfy.

• 20x24 polaroid
• large format
• polaroid camera
• photographic medium
• portrait photography

Polaroid's shutdown cut off the supply of large-format film that the 20x24 camera required, directly threatening the medium Dorfman had built her late career around. Without fresh film, she could no longer reliably create new portraits in the style that had come to define her. This obsolescence of her primary tool became one of the central, bittersweet concerns of her retirement reflections in the film.

Foreshadowing: The decision to rent rather than buy the rare camera had already left her dependent on outside forces she could not control.

• polaroid closing
• film supply
• obsolescence
• retirement
• large format film

The portrait of Allen Ginsberg holding an amaryllis was the very first photograph Dorfman ever took on the 20x24 Polaroid, making it the founding image of her large-format practice. It also reflected her long friendship with Ginsberg, who had been a subject of her earlier work and remained a dear companion for decades. The image carries symbolic weight in The B-Side as the moment her two great artistic relationships, with the camera and with Ginsberg, officially converged.

Foreshadowing: Her earlier black and white work with Ginsberg, beginning during her Grove Press years, had already established the trust that would make this iconic first portrait possible.

• allen ginsberg
• amaryllis
• first 20x24 photo
• portrait
• elsa dorfman

Ginsberg's death marked the end of a decades-long friendship that had been one of the defining relationships of Dorfman's life and art. As both an early subject and a lifelong confidant, his absence left a deep personal and creative void. His passing is one of the emotional centerpieces of the documentary, reinforcing its meditation on impermanence and the passage of time.

Foreshadowing: The very first 20x24 portrait of Ginsberg had already hinted at a bond meant to last a lifetime, making his eventual loss all the more resonant.

• allen ginsberg death
• friendship
• loss
• impermanence
• bereavement

Dorfman's access to major writers and poets came directly from her time at Grove Press, the publishing house that had immersed her in the New York literary world. Her acquaintance with Allen Ginsberg and other Beat writers opened doors to figures like Anaïs Nin, W. H. Auden, Audre Lorde, and Anne Sexton. By the 1970s, her literary network had grown into one of the most distinctive portrait portfolios of the era.

Foreshadowing: Her move back to Massachusetts placed her near Cambridge, where she could continue documenting the literary world she had first entered in New York.

• literary figures
• beat writers
• grove press
• 1970s
• anais nin
• anne sexton
• audre lorde

Dorfman did not own the camera herself but rented it, gaining periodic access to one of the rarest photographic tools in existence. Because Polaroid produced the 20x24 in extremely small numbers, only five were ever available, making each session a significant, scheduled event. This rental arrangement shaped the rhythm of her large-format work, with every new portrait requiring a planned visit with the enormous machine.

• 20x24 polaroid rental
• rare camera
• large format access
• polaroid availability

Working at Grove Press in New York City placed Dorfman at the heart of the Beat literary movement, where she met Allen Ginsberg and other writers who would become lifelong friends and subjects. Although her job was in publishing rather than photography, the relationships she built there defined the social world she would later document. This literary network became the foundation of her portrait practice for the decades that followed.

Foreshadowing: Ginsberg's presence at Grove Press foreshadowed his future role as both a defining subject and a personal anchor in her artistic life.

• grove press
• beat writers
• new york
• literary scene
• allen ginsberg
• publishing

Dorfman returned to Massachusetts to take a stable teaching position at an elementary school, stepping away from the intensity of New York's literary scene. The move brought her back to the Cambridge area, where she would eventually build her photography career and remain for the rest of her life. Her time teaching proved unexpectedly transformative, since it was during this period that a working photographer introduced her to the art form.

Foreshadowing: Her Cambridge address would later allow her to keep photographing literary friends who passed through the area, including Ginsberg.

• massachusetts
• teaching
• grove press
• career change
• cambridge
• elementary school