Photojournalist Beals Celebrated at Kronkite

Neither long skirts nor tight corsets kept Jessie Tarbox Beals from a distinguished career as the world's first woman photojournalist, according to a photographer who presented Beals' work in a slide show at the Kronkite Center last night.

Before crowd of about 80 people, Georgia W. Litwack, a freelance photojournalist and former Radcliffe lecturer, hosted the presentation in honor of the 50th anniversary of Beals' death.

"There was a great deal of information that was not in the history books about Beals' work that I felt should be presented," said Litwack, whose own work has been exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

Drawing upon a collection of primarily black and white slides, Litwack detailed Beals' career and shared many anecdotes about the photojournalist.

While Beals was covering a 1903 trial in which no photography was allowed in the courtroom, she climbed on a table and took her photos balanced against a bookshelf, Litwack said.

When a sheriff confronted her, Beals tossed the photo plates down for an assistant to hide, and scolded the sheriff for letting the bookshelf get so dusty, Litwack said.

On another occasion at the 1904 World's Fair, Beals hopped onto a hot air balloon to take a bird's-eye view of the event, said Litwack.

Litwack also presented slides of Beals' extensive portrait portfolio, which included photographs of Mark Twain, journalist Ida Tarbell, and Presidents Calvin Coolidge, William Taft, Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt '04.