Rollie McKenna

Rollie McKenna (1918–2003) was an American photographer renowned for her intimate portraits of literary and artistic figures. After studying painting and graphic design at the Massachusetts College of Art, she took up photography in the late 1940s, initially documenting her husband’s architectural work. By the early 1950s, McKenna had turned her lens toward writers and poets, forging close friendships that granted her unprecedented access to private moments.

Her portrait subjects included T. S. Eliot reading in his London flat, Sylvia Plath reclining among manuscript pages, and E. E. Cummings gazing thoughtfully outdoors. McKenna’s style blended formal composition with a sense of immediacy—she often worked in natural light and incorporated environmental context to reveal each sitter’s creative world. Her work appeared in publications such as The New Yorker and The Paris Review, and was featured in solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Beyond her portraits, McKenna documented literary gatherings, workshops, and publishing houses, creating a visual archive of mid‑century literary culture. She lectured widely on portrait photography, teaching workshops at the Maine Photographic Workshops and her alma mater. After her death in 2003, her negatives and prints were acquired by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. McKenna’s legacy endures in the way she captured the private intensity of writers at work, leaving an irreplaceable record of 20th‑century letters and ideas.