Women Photographers

The Connecticut Historical Society has recently acquired the work of two talented woman photographers, Harriet V.S. Thorne and her great-granddaughter, Rosalie Thorne McKenna, whose lives and work reflect the changes in photography as an avocation and profession from the late 19th century, when Thorne began taking stunning portraits of her friends and family through the late 20th century, when McKenna achieved acclaim as a professional portrait photographer. The photographs were the gift of the Rosalie Thorne McKenna Foundation. In the fall of 2013, CHS will mount an exhibition featuring the photographs of Thorne and McKenna together with those of a third woman, Marie Hartig Kendall, who was active in Litchfield county beginning in the 1880s.