WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley and this is the Calla Crossley Show. The MIT museum is now home to 70 years of Polaroid history and among the Polaroid collection from polarized lenses to car headlights. The instant camera is probably the most recognized and revered the one step wonder that is a camera and darkroom N1 conveys a kind of magic dispensing images that materialize before our eyes in seconds. To take stock of this life changing innovation that teeters on the edge of obsolescence we're talking to portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman about her 30 year relationship with the large format Polaroid instant camera. But first it's a conversation with an artist whose work is anything but instantaneous. Writer Linda love dida her new book The lovers rounds out her trilogy of women in crisis. Up next Polaroid and prose. First the news. From NPR News in Washington I'm Lakshmi Singh. Hurricane Earl

is making its way up the Atlantic coast toward New England. The storm side swiped North Carolina's Outer Banks early this morning leaving some downed trees and flooded roads. NPR's Greg Allen reports from Virginia Beach that the North Carolina Virginia coast appear to have gotten off relatively lightly on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Ocean overtopping combined with wind and heavy rain flooded roads causing authorities to close the island's main artery Highway 12 past about 85 miles east of Cape Hatteras as a Category 2 storm. The Outer Banks experience mostly tropical storm force winds with some gusts as high as 75 miles per hour. A few thousand homes lost power but otherwise damage appears less than what had been feared. In Virginia Beach runners and walkers were out on the beach just after the storm passed a rock festival scheduled for this weekend is going ahead as planned. Greg Allen NPR News Virginia Beach. The National Hurricane Center says Earl has been downgraded to a Category 1 storm with top winds of 85 miles per hour but it is still a threat. As Alex

Noons with member station WRNI reports Massachusetts and Rhode Island are among states having already declared states of emergency. Students at many schools in Connecticut and Rhode Island have the day off are being sent home early today. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is telling residents in low lying regions to think about leaving by this afternoon. In Rhode Island officials were optimistic about predictions showing a storm moving to the south east of Nantucket Island. But state emergency management director David Smith says residents should remain vigilant. Still dangerous conditions up here this evening expected into the night. We were asking people to stay off the road unless you have to drive. Visitors are being kept off state beaches in Rhode Island and shoreline campgrounds in Connecticut waters in Rhode Island and Massachusetts have been closed to all traffic other than ferry services. For NPR News I'm Alex Noons in Providence. At least 40 people are dead following the second suicide bombing in Pakistan this

week increasing pressure on the Pakistani government's handling of a flood disaster. They were killed in quite a when a suicide bomber hit a Shiite rally more than 100 people were injured. The latest violence came two days after a string of bomb blasts killed dozens in Lahore. The Taliban are claiming responsibility. President Obama says it's positive news reacting today to the latest unemployment report that shows a private sector added 67000 jobs last month even after this economic crisis our markets remain the most dynamic in the world. Our workers are still the most productive. We remain the global leader in innovation and discovery in entrepreneurship. But the unemployment rate has risen slightly to 9.6 percent. Dow's up one hundred two point to 10000 for 22. This is NPR. The Bureau of Prisons is failing to notify crime victims when inmates are released for medical treatment or to live in halfway houses that according to

the inspector general of the Justice Department. NPR's Laura Sullivan reports Abair of Prisons wrote up new policy guidelines in 2003 but has still not put them into practice. The inspector general called that delay excessive and unacceptable in its response to the report the Bureau of Prisons blamed the correctional officers union saying the union has to approve such guidelines. A union official called that absurd and said the bureau has never even mentioned the issue. More than 18000 inmates over the past three years have been given furloughs usually to get medical treatment or attend a funeral. Most of these inmates are low security and leave the prison on a score did. Six inmates used the opportunity to escape. Investigators say it's possible several hundred inmates should not have been granted leave. But they say it's difficult to tell because so many records were disorganized and incomplete. Laura Sullivan NPR News Washington. A strong earthquake of 7.4 magnitude reportedly hit New Zealand today. Authorities say there were no immediate reports of injuries.

The government agency overseeing offshore drilling the Bureau of ocean energy management is looking into the fire on an oil platform off the Louisiana coast. Yesterday's explosion on the Mariner Energy rig was the second in the Gulf since April that's when a BP rig exploded killing 11 workers It also caused a massive oil spill. But in this latest blast no one was killed. And Mariner says no oil was spilled on Lakshmi saying NPR News Washington. Support for NPR comes from the William in Florida Hewlett Foundation making grants to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. On the Web at Hewlett dot org. Good afternoon. I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Kelly Crossley Show as we head into Labor Day weekend. We're bringing you a rebroadcast on the arts guest hosted by Alicia and Stitt arts and culture contributor. The conversation begins with vin de la

Vega who is a novelist screenwriter editor and co-founder of the writing lab for kids eight to six Valencia. Her latest book The lovers rounds out her trilogy on women in crisis. The lovers protagonist is a widow who returns to the Turkish coastal village where she and her husband honeymooned here. Alicia and Stan is talking to Vin de la Vega about completing her trilogy. I'm excited that this is your third novel you must be very excited to to have three books out there. I'm excited to be done with it. Let's talk a little bit about the story itself let's flesh it out just a little bit for us about OK you've gone is the protagonist of the lovers and she's 53 years old and the mother of grand twins and she's been a widow for two years her husband Peter died in a tragic accident. And she at the start of the book she returns to the coastal town in Turkey a town called dacha which is right where the Aegean the Mediterranean meet in the southwest corner of Turkey. And she goes there because that's where she and her husband Peter

honeymoon 28 years before. And she has recently begun to view her marriage in a new light. And she wants to go back to the place where it started to kind of better understand how it might have been. Ravelled And why did you decide to choose Turkey as a setting for this you could have had a go anyway and I was completely by accident actually I. I went to Turkey when I was finishing my last novel Let the Northern Lights a race your name which is set above the Arctic Circle in Lapland and its takes place in the winter. And I like to be as far away you know removed from the places I'm writing about as it possibly can be and Turkey in the summer seemed about as far away from Lapland as I could get. So I went there with no intention of writing about Turkey and took no notes when I was there. And then two years later when I was starting a new novel which I thought was going to be set in Croatia actually the town that we had visited and this odd house was dated and kept presenting themselves in my mind. And suddenly I knew that

that's where I was going to set this novel. We're often told that we should write about what we know about. And you're writing about a woman in her 50s and you're in your 30s and you're writing about Turkey and you're an American writer writing about America interim America and OK OK fair enough. How did how did you come to know about these two parts of your novel. So I mean in character and that's a great question. The character go out of the setting usually start novels with a setting in mind. And what happened was I As I mentioned I was in Turkey to finish my previous book and I went back there when I decided as an aside a novel that I realized well I took no notes when I was there so I have to go back and I went back to the Sansa writer's trick right likely just have to go and to this town dacha again in 2007 and I found it was not at all as I remembered it. A lot had changed it seemed to me and and the town which had once felt very European old European to me in its charm it has prominent in a very

few tourists have become a lot more tourist in kind of seedy and also very loud. You know a lot of people on the beaches which were very filthy playing loud music and I wondered how much of it changed in reality and how much of it I just been my you know glowing Rosie interview you know outlook on it when I was first there I was when I was first there was pregnant with my first child everything was very you know exciting. And so I started I began to think well what kind of person would return to a town and be very disappointed to find that it was not as it once was. And. In that I raised that question I came up with the character of Yvonne I thought someone would honeymoon there I was going back there and and found that she'd changed. Would that be a good character for this time they seem to fit together. And I want to write about someone other than myself because I've always written about women who are about 10 years younger than I am. And I felt like it would be a new challenge for me to write about someone older and I think we all have parts of ourselves that are younger or older and so I kind of just tapped into the part of

me that's a 53 year old woman. Well surely you understand what it's like to be an American in another country. And that is very very clear from the challenges that your character faces in trying to understand the culture around her. Were you worried in doing the writing that you were doing in the research that you were doing that you might not get Turkey. Right. I think that's kind of the advantage of having a tourist be visiting country don't have you can show everything through their eyes I certainly had to do a lot of research when I was there and talk with a lot of people and like with any novel I think you do ten times more research than actually appears in the book. And you almost have to be careful to not make your book into a history lesson or a little show that says hey look at all this research I did you know you have to kind of filter your facts and you know sometimes you end up just writing one sentence about a topic that you've researched pretty thoroughly. How did you do the research on the law. I talk to a lot of people when I was there. I also fact checked a lot of contact even the travel

agency even who you know who are turkish I read a lot. I did all the things you do as a writer when you're trying to pretend you're working and you don't actually want to write. And how did you how did you first develop Yvonne I mean you talked about the setting she came out of the setting but how did you begin to shape her. That's a great question too. Well even the fact that she has twins come out the setting because dacha has a town that's on the other side of the peninsula called you dos that is everything dachas Knott's a very wealthy port that people in the yachting community often stop at and it's very beautiful and has an old amphitheater from the headline at times and. The Hellenic period and I so I think because of these twin towns I made her have twins and still I didn't have anyone in mind when I was creating Yvonne. And I've never started a character without some basis of an you know informative person who kind of just lends a few details to a character. And so I would just take I would just sit and brainstorm a lot OK what where where she from what her

parents like how she been through menopause I mean all these questions that you ask yourself as a writer and I also did a lot of research on menopause and remedies and ended up only putting one line in the book about it but those are the kinds of things you do when you're really trying to figure out your character. I also was fortunate in that I'm in a writing group with about eight other writers in the Bay Area where I live and in the same scope area and I didn't really think about this when I was starting the book but a lot of the women in my writing group are around Avons age and that end up to be. Very fortuitous for me. I feel because they could kind of fact check the book and they were they could assure me that certain details were right. And they you know the only comment they really had was one day Yvonne goes for a long drive and goes for a swim and gets you know she wins her car and all these things happen. And a writer in my group said You know that's absolutely fine she can do all those things but just make sure at the end of the day she's really exhausted so I just put a line in there that said she was going to

say she was exhausted but something to communicate that if you had to characterize Yvonne or a group of women in their 50s that Yvonne might represent how would you describe them because she's a unique kind of 50 year old 53 year old woman. What are the qualities you think represent her represent her. You know I can only speak for her but I think that she's someone who has been going along in her life and not really even though she's a teacher of history she hasn't been looking back on it with a lot of introspection and till this point two years after her husband dies. And she's someone who I think allowed her husband her husband to tell the story of their marriage and their lives and frame it in a certain way. And I was thinking about how there's even a line in the book about how they divided the household chores in that way and even that came down to the fact that when they represented their lives to other people he was the one who kind of packaged the story. And I thought well what would happen to her now that she's actually able to tell the

story and how would she see it. And so for me it she's at a point just where this crisis or her husband passing away actually makes her look back at her whole life with different eyes with a clearer vision. And we should also mention that Eve on it's not just her husband who has a louder voice than she maybe in their family life but she has one golden sun and one less than golden daughter at least ever in the history of the book the daughters is afflicted with addiction issues. And it seems to me that she really hasn't had a chance in life to be fully in her own agency and she really stumbles doesn't she in Turkey she does stumble and I thought that was actually a you know I think in Turkey is where she really realizes who she is and I think that happens to a lot of people actually why they like to travel. You start to view who you are in your your home life a little differently and since that all comes into place for her in Turkey surely her anchors come up.

Exactly yes right right great description. You have written about women who have faced grief and sadness. And your books have been these three novels have been described as a trilogy. Could you explain that. I think there are very I think of them as a very loose trilogy The three books being and now I can go let the Northern Lights or race or name and now the lovers and a loose trilogy mean they're not about the same characters. You don't have to read one to know to read another or to understand another. But I'm a huge Philip Roth fan and I really love his trilogy about American life and politics books that include Human Stain American Pastoral and I married a communist and I think each of those books are wonderful when met on their own. But there's something about reading them together that really makes them add up to more than the sum of their parts. And I think in reading these three books together I was fully aware of the fact that I was writing about women who have experienced some act of violence and are in the process of forgiving forgiving so in some ways they're about violence and forgiveness but they're

also about women in crisis and I think I started the trilogy idea because I'm a Philip Roth fan. Yes but also because when I got toward the end of my first novel and now you can go. I had that sensation I think a lot of writers experience we think oh no I didn't get everything that I wanted to get into this book. And so I kind of tried to liberate myself by saying OK I'll write a trilogy. And that of course put a lot of pressure on the on the last book. Right but that's I mean this is a case where more is more right. You're happy to have more stories to tell you. Tell me just quickly about the Philip Roth attraction I've really struggled with Philip Roth and I admire him as a writer but I sometimes get derailed by his themes. What's your attraction to him. I really love the way that rage and humor can be so in you know connected in his fiction and I feel that's true in real life and something that I tried to do a lot of in my first two books in particular and kind of show where that intersection is I think it's a very fine line and

how difficult circumstances can lend themselves to humorous situations and funny comments. Great. Great. And. Well let's let's let's take a break. I'm speaking with Venda libido and her latest novel is the lovers. We'll be back after this break. Stay tune to eighty nine point seven. With. The boy. At the. Beach. With. Us.

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The book. On the next FRESH AIR Country Music Week continues with a concert from our archive featuring Doc Watson and a performance by the Carolina Chocolate Drops a band of young musicians reviving the forgotten black string band tradition. Join us. Down a ballad on your floor on a pallet on your floor. On it won't make it. The fourth WGBH with $90 contributions right now. Unlike the 9.7 say OK what it takes to catch Davidson live. Blisters Hanover theatre September 30 details online at WGBH dot org slash box office. Good afternoon I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Kelly Crossley Show as we head into Labor

Day weekend. We bring you a rebroadcast from earlier this summer an hour dedicated to the arts a conversation guest hosted by Alicia and Stead our arts and culture contributor. Here she continues her conversation with writer vanilla Veda. Her latest book is The Lovers. Vanilla Veda is also a screenwriter editor and co-founder of the writing lab for kids eight to six full NCA Mendel. Let's hear a little bit of this book but before we do I need to ask you a question that's just been burning in my head ever since I saw your book arrive on my doorstep. Were you influenced by Marguerite Dura in her book called The Lovers. I was very much so in fact you're asking a little bit earlier about how I develop characters and something I was thinking about was what kind of book would Yvonne bring with her on this trip to Turkey. And the first book that came to mind is that she would bring Margaret draws book The lover and I did this because that book is about an older woman looking back on her life and her relationships.

One main relationship and the more I thought about it the more I began to realize how much that book had in common with this book in very subtle very subtle ways and I don't say directly in my novel what book she's reading but there are several hints that she's reading Marguerite Droz book and after a while I just books somehow give you titles that you don't even necessarily choose but this one I just felt like the title had to be the lovers not only because it paid tribute to that book but also because I think the word lovers can either be the most wonderful world word in the world or if it doesn't include you can actually be the most lonely word. And everywhere Yvonne go she seeing couples and lovers and she's not a part of it. And so that's why I called it the lovers. Well I love the phonetic sound of it too which which breaks down to two other words which is love her which is of course what she needs to focus on in her life now. Right. One of those parts of herself that maybe she's left by the wayside in the work of her family life.

You know I like to pretend that I have thought of that. I'm glad. Now I'll go around saying. Oh eventually you read a little bit of the beginning of the book for us please share. This is from the very start. When half an hour had passed and there was still no sign of a white Renault Yvonne began to fear she'd been scammed. Her flight from Istanbul was the last of the day and the small Dolman airport was beginning to empty. She stood outside under a pink veined sky looking for anybody who appeared to be looking for her. There was no one but taxi drivers announcing. I take you for my mean the equivalent she re-entered the terminal hoping she'd missed seeing Mr cell X employee who she'd been told would be holding a piece of paper bearing her name. But the only visible sign was a large poster on the wall. Turkey where East meets West on the poster two figures each holding a briefcase were walking toward each other on a bridge. She opened her laptop to consult her last email from Mr Selleck and immediately regretted it.

A pair of young men in tracksuits were staring at her. Now a woman pushing a mop was also her looking her way. Peter would have disapproved their travel to 9 to 10 now 11 countries during their twenty six years of marriage and he had been proud of their and ability to go unnoticed. This was her first trip since his death and already she was breaking their rules. So she's breaking the rules but what's going to happen is that she's going to become undone by these unfamiliar markers around her or at least in part yes that fear that you captured was really strong in this in this novel I mean that sense of watching whirling dervishes but also kind of being a whirling loose figure in the world. Have you felt that before when you traveled. You know I felt that a little bit when I travel for the third time to Turkey when I was writing this book I was I was 7 1/2 months pregnant with my second child. And I just finished rereading A Passage to India and I felt when I was read that I had to

have my character go to a cave to finish the famous cave a scene I thought Gosh Yvonne is so emotionally in a cave I actually want to physically place her there. But I had not been to the cave district of Turkey which is capital. And so I went there in the last week that I could travel when I was that pregnant. And I remember going to Konya this town where the Whirling Dervishes are and where the Met want to is very you know thats where the Mevlana museum is and Rumi as we call him here and I remember it was so hot and I got very lost in that town and the great thing about being a writer is as discombobulated as I felt the whole time I was there. I was taking notes and thinking I'm going to use this. So that was that was actually a great research trip. You know have had a terrible day. Yeah well. That's a perfect segue for us to talk about other work that you do as an editor and as a supporter of young writers and their work. There are many many people who find writing a completely decent arraign experience that

makes them feel very lost but you and I both know as do many many people who are listening that there's a real discovery in writing. Could you tell us a little bit about 26 Valencia and about the work that you do there and about your beliefs that inform that work. Ok I am on the board and also a teacher at 86 Valencia in San Francisco which is a nonprofit writing lab for kids between the ages of 8 and 18. And basics of everything is free there. The kids come in and get one on one help with their writing whether it's creative writing or homework assignments or if they're extra help or help or if they're writing a novel if they're 15 or writing a novel and have nowhere else to go they come to us. And I'm. Primarily and exclusively involve with eight to six months in San Francisco but there are now locations across the country including Boston. Yes he's a great great place. I hope you all check it out. And I am very passionate primarily about a class I teach every fall which

is called Writing the college admissions essay. And so I've been working with the students since 2001 and helping them with their college admissions essays. And when you teach them about college admission essays give us a couple of points that you always make sure that they know before they leave your presence. Well there are a lot of don't you know a lot of things to avoid in this. And this information I called in talking to a lot of readers of college admissions people who look in the U.S. system and another you know great institutions and they. Kind of they told me when I was first talking to him about certain essays to avoid which really surprised me they said Oh tell them not to not to write about the summer I went to Mexico and built a school. And it's really nice. We get so many of those the summer vacation essays and they said also tell them to avoid the essay about the goal that changed my life. Unless they're really great athletes and their goal in going to college is to play seriously. We see that as a way to many times and so when I tell my students that the start of every class

every you know the start every September or October when we start the sessions. I see this look of dismay on their faces and you can tell they were all going to write those kinds of essays but I think we can we can go through their lives and find other things that are more unique to them that really help them form a personal essay that I think can really make a difference and help them stand out. And the youngest writers you have are eight years old and very impressed that you're starting children that young and taking themselves seriously as writers. Let's listen to one of those clips that features your 8 to 6 Valencia also does podcast on its website. And this is a young man who's 11 years old. He has decided that the technical capability of young people ages 11 and around that age are under appreciated by the teachers and adults around him and he has something to say about it. But you know today tonight. In the world of the Internet during the World of the

Internet. In my fourth grade class my teacher wanted kids to help her with anything having to do with the computer she programmer specialists. Now remember these are kids performing jobs that are vital to the running of the class the teacher needed them. Last year my substitute teacher was having trouble setting up the VCR so she called in the help of the custodian an adult he can fix the problem. Then she called in a really smart kid nicknamed encyclopedias. Guess what he picks to the C.R. in the movie parade. Recently I asked for a guitar teacher if I could bring him to tell the truth for a new song on one floor and. She said no. She didn't understand how to read the tablature. Finally I thought. She was the teacher and guess what have you got talent. Sure on my own and tell myself to be unique to do my reading records. It's alright but there isn't room. So now they invite me over tells me. You're just a kid when you know. I want to travel a lot. So that's 11 year old Joseph a writer eight to six Valencia in San Francisco.

Tell us how you get these stories out of kids. I think there's a lot to be gained by just sitting down as a kid one on one and really looking at them and we don't start office and lots of computers and finally we decide we actually like put them to the side because the kids didn't necessarily want to use them and we realized important thing with them to tell their story was really feel like there was an adult there who really want to listen and help them craft their story and I think if you just listen to what a kid has to say it's amazing the stories they come they tell you and the same thing applies to you to try and draw out kids that topic for their college applications if you really you know sometimes these kids are having older kids now too but they don't realize what's so interesting about themselves they think oh I had one student who said well you know I've been working at the zoo since I was six but you know it's not really interesting. I said Really you don't think that's interesting and she said you do you think it's interesting and I said Yeah I think that's very interesting especially that given that you want to be a veterinarian and and I think that she found a lot of affirmation and authority in the fact that someone

an adult said no you're have interest or value and that's a great story but Bendel Is it a great validation for you as a writer to hold your books in your hand as a degree of validation I. I don't know if it's a great validation. I do know you know there's nothing better than having a finished book especially if every time I get to the end of a book I think I'm never doing this again. It's so hard it took so much work it was so much harder than I ever thought it was going to be. What do you mean when you say it's hard it's hard just in the term in terms of I think the editing process is really hard it's hard when you. I don't mind a writer who maps out my plots ahead of time because I think that takes some of the fun out of it and some of the surprise and for me personally I feel like I can tell sometimes when I'm reading a book that the author is meticulously plotted because I can feel they're just trying to get from point A to B. But that can also be part of the struggle when you get halfway through a book and you think OK now the knot has been tied as you know Aristotle said. And the trick is actually figure out how to untie the knot and that is

that can be the hardest part of a book and you're not the only person writing in your household and you have two young children. Tell us a little bit about what that family life is like and how you find the time and space to write. I have a 1 year old and a 4 year old and I'm also married to a writer and I think that being an author actually is a very is a is a great profession for our mothers. But I think you know it's also it's very challenging as you have self discipline issues. And one thing that we do in our household that no one can believe that this is actually we do we don't have any Internet. And so I'm actually the weird person he'll see outside the local carpet store at 11 o'clock at night kind of bumming their Internet access and trying to get my email. But I find it very very efficient to actually do your email in a parked car in a parking lot 11:00 at night because you don't want to spend a lot of time downloading videos or looking up other extraneous links. And I'm sorry why don't you have why fight your house. It's more distracting Oh yeah. I think we had it for a month and we just got nothing done that month. I think I watched a lot of

videos and I loved when I was 18 but I I found it even if I would tell myself I was only going to spend five minutes returning an email I would end up spending an hour and a half. And I think when you don't have a lot of time in the day which I don't between various jobs I have. It really helps ensure that at least have two hours to write every day. Sure we should mention too that both of your work at Valencia and as a writer you and your husband work together and we should mention your husband is Dave Eggers another well-known writer and I want to I want to just finish out our time together. There's so much more that we could say about your book and about writing. But my next guest is a photographer named elso Dorfman who's been doing her work for many years and she was associated with the Beat Generation. And she said to me a while ago. She said at the time we were just living. Did we think it would add up to anything. No but we stayed friends for 40 years. That was how we lived.

You're in a great group of the San Francisco Bay Writers. Do you feel that it will all add up to something and if so what would you like. All that great writing that you're doing and the support that you're giving to other writers what would you like that to add up to. Gosh you know I don't know what I want I haven't thought of but I know I do know what the believer with the literary and arts magazine I at it I do feel like it adds up to one big long conversation both with my coeditors and with our writers and with our readers. And for me that's what makes it worthwhile. That was our arts and culture contributor Alicia ANSTEAD speaking with vanilla Veda a novelist screenwriter editor and co-founder of the writing lab for kids eight to six Valencia. Her latest novel is The lovers which rounds out her trilogy on women in crisis. Up next it's a local treasure Elsa Dorfman on her 30 year love affair with a Polaroid instant camera. Stay with. Us.

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Weekends are great for getting together with friends from Chicago it's This American Life. First say hello to a television personality and a contributor to CBS Sunday Morning Mr. B. This is FRESH AIR weekend. I'm David Bianculli sitting in for Terry Gross. Welcome back to Bob Woodward's weekend. My guest is one woman band. Teresa and you spent time. What's your public radio. All weekend. Here on the new eighty nine point seven. WGBH radio writer David Sedaris is coming to Worcester to read from his latest collection Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk a modest beast the squirrel in the chipmunk had been dating for two weeks when they ran out of things to talk about. Signed on as a WGBH supporter with a contribution of ninety dollars and eighty nine point seven will say thanks with a ticket to see David Sedaris live in the Hanover theatre in Worcester on September 30th. Just visit WGBH dot org slash box office y and nine point seven because the way some Kenyans run out of barefoot may be

better for their bodies than running in shoes because you'll only hear Marco Werman and the world on the new eighty nine point seven. WGBH radio. Good afternoon I'm Kelly Crossley and this is the Kelly Crossley Show as we head into Labor Day we bring you a rebroadcast dedicated to the arts. We close the hour with a look at the Polaroid instant camera here Alicia and stead. Our arts and culture contributor is speaking with Elsa Dorfman the Cambridge based portrait photographer. We begin the conversation with a very familiar sound. One of my God you have just taken your first picture with a Polaroid one thousand one picture. Patient symptoms come in the world if you just press the button. No focusing. Minutes later the Polaroid 1000 if you were going to come back a good heavens it's nice to go to the camera couldn't lie and say younger.

I'm Alicia ANSTEAD sitting in for Cali Crossley This is the Cali Crossley Show. You may recognize the mechanical sound in the TV commercial for the Polaroid 1000 which was popular in the 1970s. The MIT museum is now home to an archive of more than 70 years of Polaroid history including the famous Polaroid instant camera. Joining me to take stock of this one step wonder is Cambridge portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman. She's been working with the Polaroid 20 by 20 for instant cameras since 1980. Elsa Dorfman a big welcome to you. I think it's great to see you. Elsa you've been in love with this camera for 30 years. Tell us how you got there. Tell us about what the camera looks like first of all. OK. The camera looks like I was going to say count how many times I say OK. The camera looks like your refrigerator.

It's on on the wheels of the supermarket basket. It weighs 200 pounds it has very long bellows that are about 40 inches. They can go from 40 inches if you doing a close up to about eight inches if you're far away and. It is just amazing the pictures come out in 80 seconds and you peel its appeal apart like the old Polaroid you peel it apart and then you can show someone a picture and its 23 by a 36 hour forward. Its very big and its very dramatic and it was made by Edwin Land when he invented Polaroid color film and color film was a huge deal. And what he wanted to do was show that you couldnt tell the difference

between an original painting and something made with his Polaroid color film. So he had his technicians at his instruction. Make a camera that would take a very big picture and he took a picture borrowed a picture from the Museum of Fine Arts for his annual meeting which was always very dramatic. It was like before television so everybody from all over the country would go and he put on an easel you know a picture of flowers. And then he did it with his Holroyd and then he said can you tell the difference between the switch tween has a Tony. Can you tell the difference between the real thing and the Polaroid. And he was obsessed with this idea of copying art because he felt that that scholars could see things closer with his camera

than they could. You know with their eyes. And he even took the camera to do like the top of the Sistine Chapel. I mean he really he was he. When I first started there was a camera in the basement of the Museum of Fine acts very ad oriented. Also I think that this this collection of these archival pieces at M.I.T. which will be in an exit Bishan several years from now in 2013 will give us the opportunity to go back and re-examine the word and the notion of instantaneous. Because when the Polaroid came out that was as instantaneous as we got. And now with technology and computers instantaneous is not 90 seconds. It's less than a second. No no no because in 90 seconds you get a piece of paper you get a picture. But now instantaneous. You

see it on your little screen but you have nothing in your hand to get something in your hand from your instantaneous digital. You have a whole nother sequence to go through. So it's still the mock of instantaneous. However when they do do that show this is a sad thing that those will be dead artifacts because there's no film for any of those cameras. Tell us what's going on with that with the film situation for Polaroid users. Well it is so complicated because Holroyd it's even hard for me to keep it straight. There are several permutations of Polaroid and the Edwin Land Polaroid ended and then the brand name of Polaroid has been sold successively to different companies. So

at one permutation they whoever owned the company then decided they were going to make a film Polaroid film anymore. And they basically. Dear I use the word trashed trashed all the equipment that made this marvelous Polaroid. There was one stash of equipment and one factory in the Netherlands that were bought by other people and the stash for the 20 by 24 was bought and saved and the owners of Polaroid that Polaroid let us have the equipment that went with the film. When you say let us explain who you mean you have a collective a collective of people who run by John ruder who is like

this genius dedicated intuitive wonderful photographer but also really a scientist who was able to model people who had retired from Polaroid and get them to help him. People who are involved in Polaroid were so devoted so devoted to Dr. Land and so devoted. You don't see that now know and maybe the people at Amazon are devoted or you know at Apple they commit suicide. It can't be Apple I don't know what you're trying to put it. If you know anybody who's in the AF or you know a very devoted group of people so then then they're like that because in many ways Apple is like Polaroid sure. So what do you mean when you say that also. Well in this sense of design and commitment to design and commitment to the consumer and commitment sort

of to the arts making it the kind of products that people in the ads will want and will use. Also do you know how many portraits you've taken since 1980 or approximately. I think about 4000. And how many more can you take with this finite amount of material. The idea is 30 pictures in a case so I can maybe a thousand. Because nobody can use more. It's a finite amount of film and so it can't be a hog. You know I want it all right. You have said that with your subjects you'd like them to wear clothes and that your work is about affection and survival. I'd like to read a comment that was made by the documentary filmmaker Errol Morris whose portrait you've done several times and whom you helped out

during fog of war by taking a photograph of McNamara McNamara. Errol Morris said of Elsa Dorfman. I've had my picture taken by a fair number of people. The closest thing I can compare it to is avid on in the way she works. There's something about being an extended family. Elsa has this extraordinary presence this welcoming presence. You feel like you're being brought into the community of the people whose photos are on the wall. And there are hundreds of them. Tell us what happens when we walk into your studio and have you take our picture. Well by the 20 by 24 is big and needs a lot of light so the 20 by 24 is always in the studio and I have a studio that's in the basement of an office building in Cambridge and you it is something about getting off the elevator and knowing you're in the basement of

a sub. It's very subterranean and I have I have a studio and it's jam full of postcards and props and chairs for people to sit on in little tiny Victorian coach since I do. People and families. I know exactly what Errol means and I think it will be like the summation sentence of my work. And I do the interesting thing is that I did that even in the 60s when I did black and whites I did them all in my house. And so my house was like my studio. And it did have this family. Arra of all. People who knew each other of a family and since my work if I were a sociologist everybody comes from knowing someone else a hearing something you probably could map a cluster so that

it could be like a 1990s family so to speak. So it does have that and I think certain people and I'm one of them have this bull on or learned behavior of always creating little families. I think it comes I was brought up in Boston at a time when I lived in Roxbury and Roxbury was like Stadol And I think I have a shtetl mentality. Well after you grew up in Boston you went away to New York for just a little period of time but it was enough to have you engage in a very heady group of artists there. When you came back part of that extended family here in the Boston area you live in Cambridge included Alan Ginsburg and Robert Creeley great poets of that time period. And what was that scene like for you Elsa. Well I always wanted to be arty.

So it was. Hang on hang on. What does that mean. Well in one thousand fifty nine. Artie was the opposite of immediately getting married and having children. So Artie equals independent. So are the minutes not living in your mother's house. Artie meant having an apartment with friends. It was unheard of. And you couldn't be arty and not live in your mother's house and stay in Boston. That would be a scandal. She's not living with the lane and I after I mean it would be so in a way I had no choice but to move to New York because I couldn't live in but I couldn't imagine it. So I moved to New York and I got a job at Grove Press. And Grove Press was the publisher of the Evergreen Review and very important landmark books

and I was the secretary because it was nothing else. Anybody with a B.A. who is a woman would be even at an enlightened group of people and so I was the girl Friday it was called. I wasn't even Secretary and so I was the girl Friday to the editorial department and I worked there for a year and I arranged poetry readings which I kept on doing and that was like a huge turn in my life. And you. You managed to have enough of a connection with the people you met in New York so that they all came to visit you in Cambridge which I think helped create that community around your artwork and it seems to me to help put you in a milieu that supported you as an art right. Right. Because those people like Ginsburg increasingly. Ferlinghetti Robert Bly. They they were at the

same time in their personal life I think they were toxic for women in relation to me. They were very supportive and paternal and they themselves were like a family. They created a family for themselves of themselves and and of course that was very for me to jump into because I had those same family steadily yearnings or talents or inclination inclination probably so. So that that that was how it happened. I think also you just you go back to your portrait photography for just a moment. You have we talked about your 20 by 24 Polaroid. It's one of six existing cameras of this size in the world and you continue to take photographs with it but you've not really found your way with digital cameras as much.

No I haven't found my way with the digital cameras and yet you love your iPhone. I love my iPhone. I love my little tiny Olympus 35 Millot millimeter that must be about 25 years old. I have a wide Lux that I love film cameras I just. But I think and I love my computer so it isn't that I'm a computer phobe. I think that my eye has been hit on something that I really love enough to take a digital picture to printed to me that it's the print so to me the whole story isn't taking the picture and then downloading it to my computer. So I think it's an emotional thing I haven't been drawn into it. I still have a stash of little Polaroid film. You know I think not even four by five is smaller.

And I love taking them they're like little jewels and I would be happy happy if the iPhone had like a Polaroid printer. That was the size of say a cigarette pack that could give me a print. The minute I took the picture and then you know you Apple people out there get busy figuring that one out. That would be a great little it would be handy I swear. Huge app. But you know Hugh I wonder if anything will revolutionize. Photography as much as the Polaroid and digital photography have I mean those are two very very big steps. What about CAD. The CAD computer stuff for architects That's huge. Or in printing itself the line to type machining to a computer printing it's hat breaking. But I think you know it's taken a lot of industries and

that's what's happened. It's very creepy for me to have this happen to me. But in my field but I think it's just it's an American story I think. I think it's an American waiting for Robert kero story. Well you know heartbreak is almost always accompanied by Discovery and the digital world has thrust us all into a world of discovery. Right but we haven't let go yet haven't we also realist moments of technology that you fall in love with. Also just quickly tell me what makes good art. Just jump right into the biggest field Suffolk question. Well I think it's different for everybody. Don't you think. I think people see differently. And so I I. I don't think this is an E answer. If there were any answer I'd be more than a photographer I'd be a philosopher. I I don't

know but I wouldn't be surprised if someday they said oh people who go to one side of the room and the other side of the other room their perceptions are different. And so we don't probably see the same way. Right. Right. Are you happy with the work that you chose. Has it been fulfilling to you is it fulfilling to you to do this work. I have felt like I'm the luckiest person in the world and that I have the most wonderful clients who select me and they share how they feel about their families with me. And they come always come at times it mean a lot either their mother is 95 or they know they're dying or the whole gamut. And it means the world to me to have these people come. I love the people that come to me and tell us a couple of the people the famous people besides

Errol Morris you photographed. Well the truth. I'm not into fame. I'm sort of into the fame. So I really downplay the people who are famous. That was Elsa Dorfman one of the famous artists and Cambridge Massachusetts portrait photographer. A former Girl Friday. And a true cultural trailblazer an artist that hour was hosted by Alicia ANSTEAD arts and culture contributor will be back next Tuesday. Until then have a great Labor Day weekend. This is the kallah crossflow show where production of WGBH radio Boston's NPR station or news comes your. Way at.

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