invited guest: Elsa Dorfman (first part)

Let me introduce you to a Polaroid Angel - photographer Elsa Dorfman. I hate to admit it, but I was not familiar with Elsa and her remarkable work until I came across her web site elsa.photo.net. To explore it was quite an adventure and pure joy. But before you go there, please stay for a while here at the F Blog. We will, with Mrs Dorfman´s kind permission, present some great and interesting pictures from her archives. All images are Copyright 1965-2008 Elsa Dorfman.

Elsa says: "My portraits are made with the Polaroid 20x24 camera. There are six of these cameras in the world; in Polaroid studios in New York City and Prague, in the Calument Photo Store, in Berkeley, CA, at the Rowland Foundation in Cambridge, MA., and my studio in Cambridge, MA. One camera rotates among several colleges as part of the Polaroid Corporation College Program. I love the camera and its history. I love the fact that so many people who worked camera are still devoted to it. I love the fact that it is quirky and unpredictable and seems to have its own soul. I use Polaroid Polacolor ER instant color film. ASA 80. There is another color film and black and white film, but I don't use either of them. I stick w/ the film I know!!!"

Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg

The pictures of Dylan and Ginsberg, taken 1975 are called "the music lesson"

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 1973

On Elsa´s website you will find many wonderful stories. One of them is about her first meeting with Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Allen Ginsberg

Elsa says: "It was hard to take a bad photograph of Allen. Nobody did. Maybe it was because Allen was a photographer from way back. He loved to take pictures. Unrestrained, he could snap, snap and take rolls of film. His images of Kerouac, Cassidy, and Bourroughs are the ones we have in our memory of those days." ...

...Maybe Allen absorbed the essentials of photography from hanging around photographers and artists. He was proud of being a friend of Berenice Abbott, Robert Frank and Richard Avedon. He was proud that I picked up the camera, especially the Polaroid 20x24."

Peter Orlovsky and Alllen Ginsberg, 1980

Elaine Roundtree on Route 99, 1970

I am not sure where this journey exploring the archives of Elsa Dorfman will take me. But I enjoy every minute of it.

Elsa and Harvey, 2006

TO BE CONTINUED...
invited by ulf fågelhammar