Known for her ability to bring dignity and empathy to under-represented subjects, Elena Dorfman’s recent body of work focuses on teenaged Syrian refugees, forced to flee their country because of civil war. In 2013, Elena was asked by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) to utilize her visual style to help promote the cause of the refugees. Based in the Middle East, she gravitated toward Syrian teenagers, some of whom were peaceful protesters during the early demonstrations for democracy, now shell-shocked and bereft in exile. This ongoing series, Syria’s Lost Generation, is currently the subject of a multimedia installation on view at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, DC. It was also featured as a series of portraits and accompanying first-person interviews in The New Yorker and National Public Radio show, Here and Now.

Dorfman’s photographs have been widely exhibited and collected. Her monographs include, Sublime: The L.A. River (2015), Empire Falling (Damiani, 2013), Fandomania: Characters & Cosplay (Aperture, 2007), and Still Lovers (Channel Photographics, 2005). Her work has been exhibited by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum, and the Denver Art Museum, among others. She is represented by Modernism, San Francisco and the Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York.