Series I. Portraits dates from 1900 to approximately 1940. The collection is rich in self-portraits and portraits taken of Beals by others. Beals is shown "on assignment," climbing a 20 foot ladder to get a higher angle at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and striding across city streets armed with her camera and tripod. She photographed herself in her studio, and posed often next to her camera. One photo shows her with naturalist John Burroughs.
Most portraits seem to have been taken in New York City, often at Beals' many studios. A few portraits, such as those of Booth Tarkington, Ernest Thompson Seton and Grace Seton-Thompson, William Faversham, Joseph Lincoln, and William Dean Howells, show the sitter in his or her country home. Portraits of artists include Jonas Lie, Boardman Robinson, May Wilson Preston, Rose O'Neill Wilson, Irving Wiles, James Carroll Beckwith, and Ernest Thompson Seton. Sculptors include Gutzon and Solon Borglum, Karl Bitter, Paul Trubetzkoi, Bessie Potter Vonnoh, and Daniel Chester French. Cartoonists Fontaine Fox, Homer Davenport, and John McCutcheon are also shown. Portraits also include Norman Bel Geddes, set and costume designer, and puppeteer Tony Sarg.
Writers pictured include Fannie Hurst, Llewelyn Powys and Alyse Gregory, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Emily Post, Grace Duffie Boylan, William Allen White, Ida Tarbell, and Albert Payson Terhune. Critic Sadakichi Hartman and poet and biographer Carl Sandburg are pictured. Portraits include poets Margaret Widdemer, Joseph Auslander and Sara Teasdale. Actors and actresses of both stage and screen are pictured, such as Judith Anderson, Leonore Ulrich, William Faversham, and Albert Herter. Playwrights Zoe Aiken and Rachel Crothers are also included.
Greenwich Village inhabitants and celebrities include Edith Unger, proprietress of the Mad Hatter Tea Room, writer Floyd Dell, restaurateur Alice Foote MacDougall, and actor Jerry Norris. More Greenwich Village bohemians can be found in Series II, in the Greenwich Village photos.
Many portraits in the collection show people not involved in the arts. Pioneering women doctors Mary Walker and Josephine Baker are shown, as are politicians W. H. Woodin and William McAdoo. Presidents William Taft, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover are pictured. Seemingly 'everyday people' like Capt. Billy Bowen, a sea captain, and Jane Deeter Rippin, director of a Girl Scout camp, are also pictured. Auctioneer John Mitchell is shown in full swing at a Conneticut auction. Chauncey Messenger, a beekeeper, was photographed peering out from his beehouse.
Portraits are arranged alphabetically by sitter. Sitters with three or more portraits (even if the same image) were issued their own folder.
