1st Woman Photojournalist Climbed High for a Shot

From climbing into a hot air balloon to sneaking photographs of a murder trial where cameras were prohibited, Jessie Tarbox Beals earned the reputation of doing whatever it took to obtain pictures.

Few women worked as photographers at the time, and they typically confined their work to portrait studios, but Beals became the first female photojournalist in 1900 when a Vermont newspaper published her photos of a fair.

First female photojournalist
Jessie Tarbox Beals

Born in 1870 in Canada, Jessie Tarbox was “a bright and precocious child” and earned her teaching credentials at the age of 17. She moved to Massachusetts, where her brother lived, and taught in Williamsburg and, later, Greenfield. Her interest in photography started in 1888 when, as a teacher, she won a small camera through Youth’s Companion magazine. She soon bought a more expensive camera and, in her first week of using it, earned $10.

Soon her interest in photography took precedent and she resigned from teaching after 10 years.

She married Alfred Tennyson Beals in 1897 and began to teach him the basics of photography and darkroom work.

Jessie obtained her first professional assignment in 1899, photographing the Massachusetts state prison for the Boston Post. In 1900, the couple began working as itinerant photographers, with Alfred as Beals’ darkroom assistant.

When funds ran out in 1901, they settled in Buffalo, NY, and Jessie was hired by the Buffalo Inquirer and The Buffalo Courier, making her the first woman staff photographer. Photojournalism was physically strenuous and often dangerous work. Beals became known for climbing ladders in her ankle-length dresses and large hats, while carrying her bulky 8x10 glass plate camera and 50 pounds of equipment. During a murder trial the judge ordered off-limits to photographers, Beals climbed atop a bookcase to shoot pictures through a transom window. Photos she took of Sir Thomas Lipton, inventor of the tea bag, during his visit to Buffalo were published in newspapers throughout the country.

After 18 months, she and Alfred left for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition (aka World’s Fair) in St. Louis. With some effort, she convinced the organizers to provide her a press permit, and her photographs of that event have become her most enduring and well-known. She became the Fair photographer for the New York Herald, Tribune, and Leslie's Weekly, three Buffalo newspapers, and all the local St. Louis papers, and eventually for the Fair's own publicity department, producing over 3,500 photographs of the Fair.

Jessie Tarbox Beals taking photos from
a ladder at the 1904 World's Fair

Beals had a different style from most news photographers at the time, and was willing to “hustle” (her term) to get interesting shots. She not only climbed ladders and went up in a hot air balloon, but she captured candid images of visiting dignitaries, including William Howard Taft and then-President Theodore Roosevelt. She also liked to take a series of photographs for which a writer would later be assigned, a departure from the typical newspaper process. She developed a series on the indigenous peoples who were highlighted at the Fair and explored the differences in motherhood between cultures. 

Jessie Tarbox capturing
images of the streets
 of New York City, ca. 1905

 After the Fair, Beals and her husband opened a studio in New York City, where she was the photographer and he ran the business. Her depiction of the bohemian lifestyle of Greenwich Village is well-known, but her assignments ranged from photographing auto races to portraits of society figures and more celebrities, including Mark Twain, Emily Post, and Presidents Coolidge, Hoover, and Taft.

Despite her success, the marriage struggled. Her daughter Nanette was born in 1911, but by 1917, the couple had separated. Beals opened a new studio and gallery in Greenwich Village in 1920, but caring for Nanette as a single mother with a career proved challenging. Nanette suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and was frequently hospitalized. Eventually Jessie sent her to camps, private boarding schools, and friends.

Jessie began to specialize in photographing gardens and estates of the wealthy. In 1929, she took Nanette and moved to California, where she was in great demand by the Hollywood crowd to take pictures of their estates. The Great Depression brought an end to that business, and she and Nanette returned to Greenwich Village in 1933.

Photo of children in NYC
  by Jessie Tarbox Beals, circa 1915

Making a living as a photographer became more difficult due to the economy, and Jessie’s health began to decline, in part as a result of the physical challenges she took during her career. In 1942, she died at Bellevue Hospital. She was 71. Her ex-husband Alfred did not attend her funeral, though he lived nearby.

Because Beals moved so many times and ended her life in poverty, she did not retain many of her negative plates. But efforts by other photographers resulted in her work being included in collections at the Library of Congress, Harvard University, the New York Historical Society, and the American Museum of Natural History.

She summed up her philosophy as a woman photojournalist in 1904: “If one is the possessor of health and strength, a good news instinct . . . a fair photographic outfit, and the ability to hustle, which is the most necessary qualification, one can be a news photographer.”

Sources

Women Photojournalists: Jessie Tarbox Beals - Biographical Essay(Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress) (loc.gov) 

First behind the camera: Photojournalist Jessie Tarbox Beals — Harvard Gazette 

Jessie Tarbox Beals | Women’s Rights Advocate, Documentary Photographer | Britannica 

Jessie Tarbox Beals - Wikipedia 

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests. She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and ‘40s. An unpublished novel, Shifting Currents, is a finalist in the nationally recognized Maggie Awards.

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