Join us for an evening with documentary filmmaker Chris Kepple, whose new documentary chronicles the life and legacy of photographer Rollie McKenna (Vassar class of 1940). McKenna was the subject of a major retrospective at the Loeb Art Center in 2024. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the director.

Using personal recollections, interviews with family and friends, and local and national archives, Rollie McKenna: Life and Photography explores the unconventional life and career of Rollie McKenna (1918–2003). McKenna documented an entire generation of American arts and culture thanks to her prolific career as a photographer, which afforded her both personal and professional independence. Photography allowed McKenna to travel the world and cultivate her craft free from the typical expectations of American women in the mid-twentieth century. It also offered her access to a privileged circle of authors and artists. Her subjects included Dylan Thomas, T.S. Eliot, Derek Walcott, Robert Frost, Edith Sitwell, Elizabeth Bishop, James Merrill, Alexander Calder, Helen Keller, and Robert Graves, to name just a few. Her local photographs document the local landscape of Stonington Borough as a colorful fishing village populated with artists and academics. Life and Photography will appeal to audiences interested in 20th-century literature, local history, portrait photography, architecture, literary history, popular culture, queer culture, feminist culture, and poetry.

Rollie McKenna: Life and Photography is directed by Christopher Kepple, edited by Peter Huoppi, with music by Antonio Forte, and narrated by Lisa Starr. The film is produced by Historic Stonington.

This event is free and open to the public.