Object number1987.53.165

Virginia Willson, Patricia R. Willson and Freer P. Willson

Date1967

Artist Rosalie Thorne McKenna (American, 1918-2003)

CultureAmerican

MediumGelatin silver print

DimensionsImage: 8 15/16 x 4 3/16 in. (22.7 x 10.6 cm)
Matted: 22 x 16 in. (55.9 x 40.6 cm)

Credit LineGift of the artist

On View

Not on view

Period20th c

Classification(s)

Photograph

InscribedOn verso, by artist, center in ink: Virginia Willson / Patricia R. Willson / Freer P. Willson / c. 1968 / for Xmas Card; by unidentified hand, center in pencil: #15; lower right corner: 87.53.165

MarkingsOn printed label, on verso upper center: © Rollie McKenna, Photographer / 1 Hancox Street / Stonington, CT 06378 / (203) 535-0110/2126

BibliographyRosalie Thorne McKenna, Rollie McKenna: A Life in Photography (New York: Knopf, 1991), 217 (variant). ProvenanceGift of the artist

Vassar Exhibitions

Making a Life in Photography: Rollie McKenna (Loeb)

Label TextIn 1965, McKenna relocated to the picturesque coastal village of Stonington, Connecticut, where she had periodically escaped from New York City since purchasing a house there in 1961. In 1962, Patricia (Pat) D. Willson purchased the house next door to McKenna’s. “Defying friends’ advice,” she recalled affectionately, “we unceremoniously tore down the fence between our properties to create a large lawn we would share.” There McKenna and Willson lived and raised three of Willson’s four children together. Their partnership lasted nearly two decades, until Willson’s death in 1981. Nicknamed “The Compound,” McKenna described the adjoining properties as a utopian arrangement in which she “acquired not only a loving family but still another name—‘O.M.’—Other Mother.” The familial love that McKenna shared with Pat and the Willson children—as well as the creative freedom she cultivated in Stonington—is evident in her photographs from those years. Personal freedom and stability inspired new experimentation with photography. While living by the seaside in Stonington, she wrote: “What keeps me close to the water is not just the physical location of my house but opportunities to photograph from my windows.”

DescriptionThree young teenagers (2 girls, 1 boy) posing indoors on and around a type of scaffold

Terms

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email loebcollections@vassar.edu