[2] Dorfman graduated in 1959 and subsequently moved to New York City, where she was employed as a secretary by Grove Press,[2] a leading Beat publisher.

[2] Calling herself the "Paterson Society", Dorfman began arranging readings for many Beat authors who had become friends, maintaining an active correspondence with them as they traveled the world.

In 1963, she began working for the Educational Development Corporation whose photographer, George Cope, introduced her to photography in June 1965.

She made her first sale two months later, in August 1965, for $25 of a photograph of Charles Olson which was used on the cover of his book The Human Universe.

Many well known people, especially literary figures associated with the Beat generation, are prominent in the book, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti,[11] Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso, and Robert Creeley,[12][13] in addition to people who would become notable in other fields, such as radical feminist Andrea Dworkin,[11] and civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate (who would become Dorfman's husband).

[2] She also photographed staples of the Boston rock scene such as Jonathan Richman,[13] frontman of The Modern Lovers, and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.

Dorfman thought the case could be the subject of a book and talked it over with him, after which Silverglate asked her to take a portrait of him and his brother to give to their mother.