During the long pandemic quarantine, I bought a laser cutter the size of a small Volkswagen to cut ventilator prototype parts, Brooklyn Film Camera Polaroid scan trays, and a number of other photographic equipment parts. I bought the largest cutter that I could fit in my shop, because I had been dreaming of the 20×24 Polaroid and Afghan box cameras since I was about 16 years old.
Elsa Dorfman, the portrait photographer best known for using one of the few giant Polaroid 20×24-inch cameras in existence, has died. She was 83.
Of the 6 existing Polaroid 20x24-inch cameras, one has long been in the possession of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based portrait photographer Elsa Dorfman. After more than 3 decades of shooting portraits of some of the world's best-known faces, Dorfman has decided to retire from photography.
Meet the 20x24 Polaroid Land Camera, a mythical beast in the world of large format photography. Polaroid's founder Edwin Land created only seven of these 235-pound cameras over thirty years ago, and only six exist today. Two of them are on display at Harvard and MIT, and only four are in use commercially. According to Forbes, buying prints created with this beast cost $3,500 a piece, while renting the thing for a day costs $1,750 and $200 for each shot. Back in June, an Andy Warhol photo shot with the camera sold for a quarter of a million bucks.