A Vassar Homecoming for Photographer Rollie McKenna ’40

he unconventional life of Rollie McKenna (1918–2003) was largely 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-20th century. Though she was essentially self-taught, in many ways her career began at Vassar, where she studied American history and art history and criticism.

Two years after graduating, she became a Navy officer. As the U.S. entered World War II, she enlisted in Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES) and became the first woman to attain the rank of sharpshooter in the Navy. In her autobiography, McKenna credited her maternal grandfather, in whose care she spent much of her childhood, for teaching her how to shoot. Her grandfather also instilled in McKenna a lifelong love of sailing, another experience that was formative for her as an adventurous, independent woman who did not conform to gendered expectations.

McKenna returned to Vassar in 1948 and 1949 to pursue a rare master’s degree in the history of art, with special dispensation under the G.I. Bill secured by art history professor Agnes Rindge Claflin. McKenna’s graduate study focused on the history of architecture and landscape architecture. Her master’s thesis, “A Study of the Architecture of the Main Building and the Landscaping of Vassar College, 1860–1870” (1949), remains the most comprehensive study of Vassar’s historic Main Building, designed by James Renwick Jr.

At age 30, McKenna discovered photography. In 1948, while traveling in Paris, she purchased her first professional camera. Her earliest experiments were photographing Italian Renaissance architecture at the suggestion of Vassar architectural history professor Richard Krautheimer. Her appreciation for the history of these structures, combined with careful attention to photographic processes and effects, immediately brought these pictures to the attention of architectural historians and their students across the United States.

As a student at Vassar, McKenna made invaluable professional connections. At the same time, she faced gender bias in a male-dominated profession, which required working exponentially harder to prove herself. A peripatetic childhood, spent shuffled between relatives, cultivated her sense of adventure, anchored by lifelong friendships, many of which began at Vassar. One of those friends was Ruth Adams ’39, who graduated a year before McKenna and later became Editor-in-Chief of America Illustrated, the Russian-language magazine published by the U.S. Information Agency for distribution in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. During her time at the magazine, Adams frequently hired her college friend to create photo essays about the rapid cultural transformation occurring in New York, which led McKenna further into the world of architecture. Her work with Adams gave her the editorial freedom to co-create stories she felt passionate about.

Completion of the iconic Seagram Building in Midtown Manhattan in 1958 presented another opportunity for McKenna. The project was overseen by Phyllis Lambert ’48, another illustrious Vassar alum who had graduated a few years after McKenna. Lambert commissioned modernist architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson to design the modernist skyscraper. This high-profile project effectively launched Lambert’s distinguished career in architecture. Lambert commissioned McKenna to photograph the building’s exterior, and several of McKenna’s photographs were printed in the Vassar Quarterly the following year.

Lambert remembers holding McKenna in high esteem: “I recall that it was not only that she walked around always with a camera, but my admiration, and perhaps surprise, [at seeing] a graduate as a professional. In the late 1940s, this seemed extraordinary.” Some 70 years later, Lambert remembers McKenna as a young photographer who exuded an air of professionalism that left a lasting impression and would drive her career forward.