Chamber honors ailing photographer with lifetime achievement award

Mary Pat Dorr and Shade Hotel owner Mike Zislis following the installation of Dorr’s 12-panel mural of the Manhattan Beach pier in 2007. Photo by Lisa McDivitt

Popular Manhattan Beach photographer Mary Pat Dorr was honored with a lifetime achievement award Wednesday by the Manhattan Beach Chamber of Commerce. Paul Dorr, her husband of nearly five decades, accepted the award on his wife’s behalf. Dorr was unable to attend the ceremony because the breast cancer she has battled for the past two decades has left her too weak to leave her Manhattan Beach home.

Because of her widespread reputation as a portrait and scenic photographer, Dorr’s two-decade-long battle with breast cancer has been a public one. Last year she spoke to fellow cancer “fighters” during the Breast Cancer Comfort Bag presentation organized by the Manhattan Beach Soroptimist. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among women (after lung cancer). Approximately one in nine women in the U.S. are diagnosed with breast cancer.

Dorr’s photographs can be found in hundreds of beach area homes and businesses. Her 20-foot mural of the Manhattan pier is displayed on the second floor of the Shade Hotel.

Dorr frequently donates her photographs to local charities for silent auctions. She has been the official photographer of the American Martyr’s Church Sophisticated Snoop Home Tour for over three decades.

During an Easy Reader interview two years go, Dorr talked about a photograph she had taken of her two-year-old granddaughter Bridget in the Tuscany-inspired, backyard garden of her Manhattan Beach home. Her granddaughter is gazing downward with her eyelashes highlighted by the garden’s yellow wall.

 “It’s like a prayer. That’s why I do photography,” she said. ER

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