The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography

“I don't like to take pictures of people who are sad. And I don't like to take pictures of people who are brokenhearted,” says Polaroid portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman, the charming subject of filmmaker Errol Morris's low-key documentary. Built around a lengthy interview that Morris conducts with Dorfman as she shares archival photos from her files, The B-Side chronicles Dorfman's journey as a budding photographer who was friends with the exceptionally photogenic Allen Ginsberg and took pictures of iconic figures including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jorge Luis Borges, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Anaïs Nin, and others. But Dorfman found her true calling in 1980 when she discovered the Polaroid Land 20 x 24 camera (the company only made a handful). Dorfman spent the next 35 years photographing individuals, families, and celebrities, and she shows Morris many of the large-scale family photos, including the “mistakes.” Mistakes? asks an incredulous Morris. Dorfman explains that all of the family pictures are mistakes: she takes two photos; the family picks one, and she keeps the other, which she calls the “B-side.” Often, it is this rejected photo that is the more artistic picture. Along the way, viewers learn a bit about Dorfman's life with her husband Harvey (who traditionally gives her black balloons on her birthday) and son Isaac, but the main focus is on Dorfman and her amazing oeuvre. And she is a wonderful interviewee, at one point claiming, “Everything I did made sense, if you knew me.” Words to live by. Highly recommended. (R. Pitman)