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Interview with Elsa Dorfman |
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Tuesday, 28 June 2005 |
The lady behind the big camera
An interview with Elsa Dorfman
Elsa Dorfman is celebrating this year her 25 years of work with the Polaroid 20x24 camera, which she is renting from
Polaroid in her Cambridge studio. In those years she has
produced an impressive body of work, an amazing celebration of life, a passionate look on humanity.
Mamut : Hi Elsa, thank
you for your time, we'll start with a simple question : how did
you get involved with the Polaroid 20x24 camera ?
 Elsa : Polaroid was
a Cambridge MA company for say fifty years and that is where i live.
They were very dominant in the photography and art community. A Polaroid
VP, Eelco Wolff, was the liaison to the art community and he did a fantastic
job introducing Polaroid materials to artists. In 1980 Allen Ginsberg
a longtime friend of mine was coming to Cambridge and Polaroid allowed
me to take some portraits in exchange for their selecting a few for the
Polaroid collection. See images from my first session here.
Mamut : And from those first images, you kept working with the polaroid
20x24, why ? It is not an easy, practical or cheap way to take images !
Elsa : It is such fun ! It is like performance art. It is so special, people love it, I love it. Once I
got the hang of it I just glombed onto it. I became obsessed with it, it captivated me.
Mamut : Your work with the 20x24
is your trademark, but do you work with anything else ?
Elsa : Well,
from 1965 to 1980 I used conventional black and white film. I still
do and I play with a digital camera. But emotionally I am invested in
the 20x24 and in my web site which is my obsession : elsa.photo.net
There you can see a book I did in 1974 in black and white, the entire book,
Elsa's Housebook
is on my web site.
Mamut: This
is a perfect example of your work : you are very generous with it. Some photographers
have only a few images on their websites, in fear of copyright infrigments,
I guess, and hide them in flashy layouts. You, on the other hand have tens
of pages of text, hundreds of images, your complete "Housebook", all in a simple
and efficent layout. Why are you doing things differently ?
Elsa: Well, my website is my obsession, and I consider it an art form and an art piece,
dare I say work of art, and so it reflects my point of view. I have always done things differently, not to be
different, but I do things that feel right to me and it turns out to be different from what feels right to everyone else.
It was a huge burden and confusion when I was younger. Why was I so out of step ?
But now I am almost seventy, I am used to the fact that my own point of view and approach are
different from the norm.
Mamut : The images created with the
polaroid 20x24 have a "life of their own" so to speak, and a presence
that cannnot be obtained in any other way. How do you relate to
that as a photographer, do you sometimes feel that the camera and
the process takes over your own creativity ?
Elsa : I think the camera
and the film are totally magical. The camera has a soul. There is a
dybbuk living there. It is a magic machine. I think the limitations
of the camera.....that it only going vertical, that I have just one lense,
that it can't go outside, too fragile, stimulate my empathy and intuition
abt whatever subjects are before me. I consider my studio a holy place
and that I channel my subjects so to speak. On the other hand, though
I consider the studio holy and myself channeling, I don't try to capture
my subjects souls or reveal them. I want my subjects to feel like themselves,
accept themselves, be themselves, just be. That is plenty.
Mamut:
Many proeminent photographers have a "celebrities" section on their website,
where they can brag about all the famous people they have photographed, and
you tend to treat everyone on the same level, the level of human beings, and
I think that's what so compelling about your work.
 Elsa :
Yes, that is totally my approach. Not to labor it, but I am mot intersted in celebrity
per se. I am interested in the person behind the celebrity, if the person is still there.
Even thirty years ago when I did the Housebook I had the same point of view, not to overplay
the "celebrity" aspect but to treat everyone in the Housebook the same. Maybe, probably there is
some artifice to my approach, but I hope not. I don't know, it feels right.
Mamut : In today's photographic market, where almost everything is going
the way of digital, do you think ther is still a place for machines like
the Polaroid 20x24 ?
Elsa : Well, I sure hope so. Polaroid film
in any format is so magical. But I don't know, the company was just sold
last week, so what the future will bring is anyone's guess. I am 67 and
would like to work till I am over 80 and then keel over in my studio! Who
knows. It is a desire. I try to be very zen about the future and the future
of my medium. What else is there to do really, drive myself nuts. My
husband told me about a band that was going nuts trying to find magnetic
recording tape, now it is all digital. Every medium is being transformed
by digital. There certainly is a place for the polaroid 20x24 and lets
pray the new owners see that.
Mamut : Since you bring it up, what do
you think of the recent acquisition of Polaroid ?
Elsa : I only know
what I have read in the papers and on Google. I couldn't find it in the Wall
Street Journal. It is heartbreaking that the people who bought the company
and took away benefits from people who had worked at Polaroid for years and
years made so much money in this latest sale. Not the fault of the new owners. The
company was originally very paternalistic and the founder must be twirling
in his grave.
Mamut : As you've said, you no longer get the 20x24
out of your studio, and so people come into your studio to have their
portrait taken. This could potentially become a very academic and cold
approach, but yet your images are always full of life and you seem to have
a very personnal contact with your models. How important is this in your
photographic process ?
Elsa: It is what it and I are all about. I use the
word subject rather than model. I always photograph people who chose or select
me and pay me. And of course friends and people I want to photograph. But the
film is so expensive that I rarely do people who don't pay me. I have what
I call pro bono portraits every year, this year it was a huge number, but
usually it is about twelve, not counting relatives.
Mamut : You also
have recurring images on the evolution of people, for example the Martin luther
king Open School kids, or your own self-portraits, even with the No hair day series.
How is that related with your vision of the passage of time ?
 Elsa:
Well, yes, I have followed my son and his friends in the section called PALS
. The no hair day portraits were shot all the same
day, it was a miracle day in my carreer. Do I have a vision of the passage
of time ? Well, I think every photographer is probably obsessed with the
passage of time, even if he/she is unaware of the obsession. And surely a
portrait photographer has an innate sense and obssession with time. I love
when people come back again because then you see that passage of time. I recently
added to my website a whole series of pictures of clients who have come twice.
I did this part of the website
with a wonderful poet named Robin Becker.
As for my obsession with self-portraits,
it goes way back. If you look into the Housebook you will se many self portraits.
Maybe it comes from wearing glasses from age five and always staring or looking
at myself with my glasses on and off... I'm not very narcissistic I think,
but I do like self portraits. For one thing I'm always available to myself,
and I can "play with myself" so to speak, and try things out with myself. I
always felt my comfort level with my camera came from my willingness to put
myself in front of the camera. I never ask a client or a subject to do anything
I wouldn't do myself. Or haven't done. Maybe the clients sense that.
 Mamut
: Why do you consider the NoHair Day a miracle day in your career ?
Elsa :
Because I took all twelve pictures in a row, without any camera malfunction,
without me malfunctioning, without my subjects malfunctioning, without any script, any
plan, just thinking one picture and then the next... and it was so perfect. The pictures are so perfect.
the subject was so touching. I don't think I will have another day like that... and I felt,
ok, I've had this perfect day and now I can relax and work and not be greedy to have more
days like this. Does that make sense ? I just felt one can't expect to have more magical days like this.
Maybe it was a sign I was getting older. Because in retrospect I have had other magical days, but not after no hair day
I think. On the other hand, these assessments and critical analyses are better made by someone else than me.
I know what I'm doing even though I seem not to know what I am doing, I am just not interested in analyzing what I do,
it seems like bad karma, like it isn't my job to analyze and dissect, though I like to analyze and comment on the work of others.
Mamut : I have noticed that for some reason more women photographers
tend to make many autoportraits, do you think it's the case, and why do you
think that is ?
 Elsa : Yes, this is true. Maybe women fundamentally resent how they are
represented by men and they want to explore themselves or want to nail down themselves
how they are to themselves and not be just the material for men to be interpreted by men.
Probably every woman has a different reason. I think that women are given more to selfexamination
and thoughtfullness, pardon me, than a lot of men. And so they like to document their stage
of thoughtfullness. Maybe women are more used to looking at themselves, in the mirror, apllying make-up, etc., than
men and so they are more comfortable turning the camera on themselves.
Cenrtainly in the seventies there were a lot of women doing self portraits. Almost a fad and there is at
least one collection of portraits.
Mamut : How about the paradox of trying to record the
passage of time with an instant camera ?
Elsa : Well, all cameras
are instant cameras. It's just that the polaroid develops right then and there
and with conventional cameras one has to go to the darkroom to get that instant
off the film and onto paper. Now, I haven't thought about the instantness
of digital, but of course, it is instant too. I think the "instantness" of
the Polaroid, the word, is about having the image in your grubby hands within
80 seconds and not having to send it to the drugstore or go to the darkroom.
In the beginning the cameras were sent to Kodak for developpement of the film,
amazing huh ? Of course with a digital camera or a film camera with a motor
drive, you really get many instants. With the polaroid, since you have to
wait 80 seconds, there is a slowness, so the Polarois is actually less "instanty"
than other cameras. But photography is always choice of moment, either by
intelligence or chance
Mamut : A lot of people coming into your studio
seem to come at various milestones in their lives, like trying to stop
the passage of time by stopping it dead on it's tracks with the biggest
instant image you can get, what do you think ?
Elsa : I think it
is more about commemoration, celebration. Like knocking on wood that we've
made it. I consider it an honor to be part of those commemorations. Of course,
about 25 people have come over the years when they knew they were dying and
that is the biggest honor of all. And yes, I think I want to stop time. Commemorate
it. Celebrate it. Save the moment. Cherish the moment and have evidence of
the moment.
Mamut : on this philosphical note I'd like to thank you very
much Elsa for your time, and wish you a very productive year 2005.
You'd like to see more of Elsa's work ?
You can visit her website, which contains tons of information, and here are two books featuring photographs by Elsa Dorfman, which you can by from Amazon.com through these links :
No Hair Day : a compassionate look at three women fighting breast cancer.
En famille : a poem by Robert Creeley, photographs by Elsa Dorfman.
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