From the library of the important American poet Frank Bidart, who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, and the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry for his book Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016. His signature of ownership is found on the verso of the front cover.
Photographer Elsa Dorfman's landmark "housebook" features her diaristic texts paired with intimate, snapshot-style portraits of her friends—some of the era's most revered literary artists—hanging out in her kitchen, on her living room sofa, and in her library in Boston during late 1960s and early 1970s.
Her guests include poets Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Anne Waldman, Robert Bly, Charles Olson, Joanne Kyger, and Martha Davidson, as well as Beat generation figures Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, and Robert Creeley. The book also features portraits of people who would become famous in other fields, such as radical feminist Andrea Dworkin and civil rights lawyer and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education co-founder (and Elsa’s husband for over 40 years), Harvey A. Silverglate.
Elsa’s life as a photographer is the subject of The B-Side, a 2016 documentary film by Errol Morris.
“In 1973-74, while I was a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College I pulled together the pictures that I had taken of my friends in my house at 19 Flagg St and wrote a text to go with them. (There's a long tradition of photographers photographing their families and friends. What could be more obvious and instinctual, except perhaps photographing your favorite tree or flower?)
“While I was still working on the book, David Godine agreed to publish it. We had our struggles, mostly over the text, the format, the tone. Eventually, I convinced David I was on the right track, at least for me. The book was designed by Lance Hidy and he showed me his pencil mock-up over peking duck at Peking on the Mystic in Cambridge. I picked out the colors of a box of Kodak film for the cover. I figured if it was good enough for Eastman, it was good enough for me.” —Elsa Dorfman
From the library of the important American poet Frank Bidart, who received the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the Griffin Poetry Prize Lifetime Recognition Award, and the 2017 National Book Award for Poetry for his book Half-light: Collected Poems 1965–2016. His signature of ownership is found on the verso of the front cover.
Photographer Elsa Dorfman's landmark "housebook" features her diaristic texts paired with intimate, snapshot-style portraits of her friends—some of the era's most revered literary artists—hanging out in her kitchen, on her living room sofa, and in her library in Boston during late 1960s and early 1970s.
Her guests include poets Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Anne Waldman, Robert Bly, Charles Olson, Joanne Kyger, and Martha Davidson, as well as Beat generation figures Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, and Robert Creeley. The book also features portraits of people who would become famous in other fields, such as radical feminist Andrea Dworkin and civil rights lawyer and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education co-founder (and Elsa’s husband for over 40 years), Harvey A. Silverglate.
Elsa’s life as a photographer is the subject of The B-Side, a 2016 documentary film by Errol Morris.
“In 1973-74, while I was a Bunting Fellow at Radcliffe College I pulled together the pictures that I had taken of my friends in my house at 19 Flagg St and wrote a text to go with them. (There's a long tradition of photographers photographing their families and friends. What could be more obvious and instinctual, except perhaps photographing your favorite tree or flower?)
“While I was still working on the book, David Godine agreed to publish it. We had our struggles, mostly over the text, the format, the tone. Eventually, I convinced David I was on the right track, at least for me. The book was designed by Lance Hidy and he showed me his pencil mock-up over peking duck at Peking on the Mystic in Cambridge. I picked out the colors of a box of Kodak film for the cover. I figured if it was good enough for Eastman, it was good enough for me.” —Elsa Dorfman