Where is the avatar stored and how do I get access for a list of contacts?

I was searching through the forum and a few people have mentioned that the avatar is stored in PartyImage. Thing is, there doesn't appear to be a mention of PartyImage anywhere in the database. Also, different people have mentioned that all of the avatars are stored in BLOBs, I have partly confirmed this with a request to the PartyImage endpoint. When I inspect the image elements in staff views, they exist as hotlinks to JPGs in the "/web/images/profile" directory. What's with this? Does the image actually exist anywhere in a filesystem or is this a bit of temporary fakery in the api?

I need to grab profile images for a list of contacts, but I don't want a base64 encoded image. I want a list of thumbnails that I can efficiently link to and load aynchronously. As far as I can tell, the PartyImage that is returned is far too large (full res looks like). What's the best way to do this?

Thanks