Jessie Tarbox Beals

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Jessie Tarbox Beals with her camera (1905)
Jessie Tarbox Beals with John Burroughs (1908)
The Indian Teak Jain Temple at the 1904 World's Fair

Jessie Tarbox Beals (* 23. December 1870 as Jessie Tarbox Richmond in Hamilton , Ontario , † thirtieth May 1942 in New York City ) was an American photographer. She was the first press and night photographer in the United States .

She became known in 1904 as a freelance press photographer with her pictures of the World Exhibition in St. Louis and her documentary recordings, including from the New York bohemian Greenwich Village . Her self-recognized “ability to hectic” and her persistence in breaking down gender barriers in photography are her trademarks.

Early life

Jessie Tarbox was born on December 23, 1870, the youngest child of sewing machine manufacturer John Nathaniel Tarbox and his wife Marie Antoinette Bassett. Tarbox had come to prosperity as the inventor of a portable sewing machine and through partnering with Canada's largest sewing machine manufacturer. His patent expired in 1877, he lost all his savings through a bad investment and became seriously alcoholic as a result . Eventually his family separated from him and Jessie's mother made a makeshift livelihood by doing handicrafts and selling items from the family's property.

Jessie was considered a "smart and precocious child" and achieved good grades in school. She was admitted to the Collegiate Institute of Ontario at the age of fourteen and passed her teaching degree at seventeen. She moved to her brother Paul to Williamsburg ( Massachusetts ), where she taught at a school einklassigen. In 1888 she received a small, rudimentary camera from the youth magazine Youth's Companion , with which she photographed her students and the surrounding area. She soon bought a larger camera for $ 12 and was making up to $ 150 a day from her work. Then she bought a high quality Kodak camera and set up her first photo studio in her Williamsburg house. Despite all of this, photography initially remained just a hobby for her.

Career as a photographer

In 1893, Jessie Tarbox took a new teaching position at Greenfield and attended the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago . Her interest in travel and photography was aroused when she came into contact with the American photographers Frances Benjamin Johnston and Gertrude Käsebier at the exhibition .

In 1897 she married the Amherst graduate and factory mechanic Alfred Tennyson Beals.

Two years later, Beals' professional photography career began when she was commissioned by The Boston Post to photograph the Massachusetts State Prison.

Beals taught her husband the basics of photography. In 1900 the couple worked as traveling photographers, with Alfred working as an assistant in the darkroom. Based on her publication in the Windham County Reformer , Beals was found creditworthy and received her first line of credit .

When their savings ran out in 1901, they relocated to Buffalo , New York State . Beals so impressed the editors of the Buffalo Inquirer and The Buffalo Courier with her shot "On the Albany," which shows a row of waddling ducks , that she was hired as a permanent photographer. She became the first female photojournalist and was appreciated by the newspapers and citizens of Buffalo. In 1904 she left the newspapers to document the World's Fair.

Photojournalism was a physically demanding and often risky job due to the heavy and unwieldy equipment. But Beals did not let ankle-length dresses and large hats hinder her from her work. Their equipment consisted of an 8 × 10 inch glass plate camera with 25 kilograms of accessories. No press photographers were allowed in the courtroom to report on the sensational murder trial of Edwin L. Burdick in 1903. However, Beals climbed onto a bookcase in the press room adjoining the courtroom with the help of other reporters and took seven pictures through the skylight above the connecting door before a sergeant caught her and tied up more pictures.

In 1904, Beals was sent to St. Louis for the opening of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition . She was able to persuade the officials on site to issue her with a subsequent press permit for reporting on the advance notice. She climbed ladders and rose in a hot air balloon to get the pictures she wanted. She was particularly interested in the representatives of indigenous peoples . The result was 150 pictures, which, through their spontaneous and unconstrained liveliness, clearly differed from the view of members of “primitive” ethnic groups that was customary at the time. Her photographic style differed from that of other reporters. She concentrated on series of images that were later used to write articles - other photographers illustrated prepared reports. Her activity and her ability to make herself noticed earned her the position of official exhibition photographer for both the organizer's press department and numerous newspapers such as the New York Herald , Leslie's Weekly and The Tribune . As part of her work, 3,500 pictures with 45,000 prints were made from the exhibition.

In addition to the photographs of the various exhibits, Beals also succeeded in creating a picture series with President Theodore Roosevelt at the exhibition . She documented all the stations that Roosevelt visited. At his last stop, Roosevelt spoke to Beals and she explained her job to him. As a result of this encounter, Beals was given permission to photograph Roosevelt in 1905 when he met the Rough Riders , of whom Roosevelt had been in command in 1898, in San Antonio .

Further recordings were made in 1904 at the third Summer Olympic Games taking place parallel to the World Exhibition in St. Louis. Like four years earlier, the Olympics were connected to the World's Fair and received little attention.

Studio on Sixth Avenue

In 1905, Beals opened her own photo studio on Sixth Avenue in New York City and took on a large number of assignments. There were recordings of car races as well as portraits of socially known people. Her photos from the artist and trendy district of Greenwich Village and the slums of New York became famous. This was followed by other shots of presidents like Calvin Coolidge , Herbert Hoover , William Howard Taft and celebrities like the writer Mark Twain , the playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay and the author Emily Post .

During this time there was a crisis in their marriage. In 1911 she gave birth to their daughter Nanette Tarbox Beals, who was born from another liaison . In 1917 Beals left her husband, and in 1924 they divorced.

Studio and gallery in Greenwich Village

Beals moved to Greenwich Village and opened a new photo studio and gallery in 1920. Her daughter Nanette suffered from rheumatoid arthritis , which was associated with frequent hospital treatment and intensive care. Maternal care and her work increasingly came into conflict, so that Nanette mostly lived with Beals' former husband Alfred and in a boarding school. Nanette later lived temporarily with an old friend of Beals.

Later years

As the number of female photographers increased in the 1920s, Beals focused on public speaking and specialized in photography of suburban gardens and estates of wealthy East Coast residents.

In 1928 she and Nanette moved to California , where Beals photographed the Hollywood mansions. The Great Depression forced mother and daughter to return to New York, where Beals resumed work in Greenwich Village.

Beals was becoming increasingly impoverished, her lavish lifestyle for years and the effects of the economic crisis took their toll. Beals died on May 30, 1942 at the age of 71 in Bellevue Hospital .

Collections

Her photographs and prints are in the collections of the Library of Congress , Harvard University , the New York Historical Society, and the American Museum of Natural History . In 1982, daughter Nanette Beals Brainerd donated Beals' pictures and papers to the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study .

gallery

  • Photographs by Jessie Tarbox Beals

  • White cat under the Christmas tree (ca.1907)

  • "Boy Blue" sits on a table next to a bird cage and looks down at a toy frog tied to a string. (approx. 1903 to 1928)

  • Beagle (?) Was sitting outside on a stone staircase with his back to the camera. The skirt of a kneeling woman near the dog is visible on the left (c. 1905 to 1910)

  • Brooklyn Bridge (1919)

  • Child pushes a dog in a stroller. (approx. 1908 to 1918)

  • Dr. George Dorsey (c. 1927/1928)

  • Festus J. Wade and David Rowland Francis at the World's Fair. (1904)

  • Olympic marathon runners Len Tau and Jan Mashiani (1904)

  • American archers (1904)

literature

  • Alexander Alland: Jessie Tarbox Beals, First Woman News Photographer , Camera / Graphic Press, New York 1978, ISBN 978-0-918696-08-3 .
  • Eric Breitbart: A World on Display: Photographs from the St. Louis World's Fair , University of New Mexico, Albuquerque 1997, ISBN 978-0-8263-1742-1
  • Manuela D'Agostino: L'esperienza universale di St. Louis: un racconto attraverso le photography di Jessie Tarbox Beals . Rome: Carocci editore, 2018 ISBN 978-88-430-9116-4
  • George Matthews, Sandra Marshall: St. Louis Olympics 1904 . Chicago: Arcadia, 2003 ISBN 9780738523293

Web links

Commons : Pictures and Documents by Jessie Tarbox Beals  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Women Photojournalists: Jessie Tarbox Beals - Biographical Essay (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress). Retrieved May 7, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d JESSIE BEALS THIS; : [PHoTo H ERi_7I i; One of First Women 'to Take Photos for Press Snapped 4' Presidents During Career . In: The New York Times . May 31, 1942, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 16, 2019]).
  3. ↑ a b 28 September 1927, Page 17 - The St. Louis Star and Times at Newspapers.com. Retrieved July 15, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Feb. 27, 1910, Page 32 - The St. Louis Star and Times at Newspapers.com. Retrieved July 16, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Alexander Alland: Jessie Tarbox Beals: First Woman News Photographer . Camera / Graphic Press, 1978, ISBN 978-0-918696-08-3 , pp. 22 .
  6. ↑ 23 Mar 1904, 6 - The Buffalo Enquirer at Newspapers.com. Retrieved July 15, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b Alexander Alland: Jessie Tarbox Beals: First Woman News Photographer . Camera / Graphic Press, 1978, ISBN 978-0-918696-08-3 , pp. 36 .
  8. ↑ 23 Feb 1997, Page 56 - The Baltimore Sun at Newspapers.com. Retrieved July 16, 2019 .
  9. ↑ a b Alexander Alland: Jessie Tarbox Beals: First Woman News Photographer . Camera / Graphic Press, 1978, ISBN 978-0-918696-08-3 , pp. 45 .
  10. ^ Danika Medak-Saltzman: Transnational Indigenous Exchange: Rethinking Global Interactions of Indigenous Peoples at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition . In: American Quarterly . tape 62 , no. 3 , September 2010, p. 591-615 , doi : 10.1353 / aq.2010.0010 , PMID 20857585 , JSTOR : 40983421 .
  11. ↑ Shoshi Parks: Scientists staged a racist Olympics in 1904 to “prove” white superiority. May 29, 2018, accessed July 19, 2019 .
  12. ^ Charles Hagen: PHOTOGRAPHY REVIEW; Village Bohemians From Another Era . In: The New York Times . September 2, 1994, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed July 16, 2019]).
  13. ^ First Behind the Camera: Photojournalist Jessie Tarbox Beals. June 13, 2012, accessed July 16, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Tarbox Beals, Jessie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Richmon Tarbox, Jessie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American photographer
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamilton (Ontario)
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1942
Place of death New York City