Jessie Tarbox Beals photograph collection, circa 1905-1940

The Jessie Tarbox Beals Collection contains 420 black and white photographs, circa 1900-1940, primarily of New York City and its inhabitants. It also includes postcards, as well as larger prints, of bohemian Greenwich Village between 1905 and 1920. Jessie Tarbox Beals (1870-1942), a school teacher who taught herself photography, joined the Buffalo Courier staff in 1902 and became known as the first woman press photographer. She moved to New York City in 1905 and remained there for most of her career, leaving only to settle in southern California and Chicago for a few years during the late 1920s and early 1930s. She practiced many types of commercial photography with the vigor and speed associated with news work. Her body of work includes portraits, garden photography, city street scenes, fashion photography, and documentary photography.