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Elsa Dorfman, veteran portrait photographer, was born in 1937 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After studying French Literature at Tufts University, she took a job as editorial secretary for the managing editor of Grove Press and The Evergreen Review in New York. Before moving back to Boston in 1962, Dorfman co-founded The Paterson Society, an agency that helped arrange poetry readings for college poets and published small books of their work.
Back in New England, Dorfman earned an M.A. in elementary education from Boston College and briefly taught fifth grade before beginning work at the Educational Development Corporation in 1964. At EDC, a center for developing innovative curriculum materials for schools, Dorfman met a number of photographers, learned how to use a camera and develop prints, and became hooked. By 1974, she had assembled and published Elsa's Housebook—A Woman's Photojournal, a collection of informal portraits of friends and houseguests Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Laurence Ferlinghetti, and others.
For the past 34 years, Dorfman has produced personal and commercial portrait photographs of what she calls "affection and survival." She uses a special oversized Polaroid camera, one of only six worldwide, to create very large prints (23" x 23"). She works in New York and in Cambridge, where she also lives.
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