Zelda Cheatle is a well known curator and editor of photography. After some years taking photographs, she began a gallery career at the Photographers Gallery London 1982 – 1988, working with internationally renowned photographers and emerging British and European artists using photography.
From 1989-2005 the eponymous Zelda Cheatle Gallery exhibited important work; including Helen Chadwick, Eve Arnold, a Century of Russian photography, Imogen Cunningham, Sarah Moon, Manuel Alverez Bravo, Lee Miller, James van Der Zee ,Robert Frank, Abbas Kiarostami and Mari Mahr amongst many illustrious names. The ZCG consistently showed young and emerging artists, whilst acknowledging the importance of the history of photography and exhibiting iconic work from across the 20th century.
Titles include Mark Power, Shipping Forecast, Roger Mayne, The Street Photographs of Roger Mayne, David Hiscock, Steve Pyke, Philosphers, Helen Sear, Twice, Mari Mahr, Symbols of Ourselves, John Blakemore, Inscape and The Stilled Gaze, the first years of the John Kobal Foundation Portrait Awards catalogue, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Thirty, Photography Discussed .Eve Arnold , Retrospective.
2005 – 2012 Zelda Cheatle was responsible for initiating, sourcing and establishing the first Photography Fund. Primarily collecting fine prints of the 20th century, the Fund Collection included the Eve Arnold Archive of vintage prints and a significant Russian collection from Rodchenko to Lissitzky and the Vhutemas School, and a collection of 20th Century iconic works from Sudek to Steichen.