Zelda Cheatle | Mysite

23rd November 2020

Zelda Cheatle Talk

Zelda background info:

Zelda Cheatle studied photography at Brighton where there was not an actual photography course. She had to alternate between fine art and graphics. She then completed her post-graduate degree for Photography at Goldsmiths. Different to today, at that time she had to show them her sketchbook and show that she could draw and paint before she could do Photography. During 1980 she found out that there had always been a Photography course at Guilford which she didn’t know about and mentions how lucky us students are today. She mentioned how she learned everything from the technicians in Brighton as there was no tutors. Cheatle also mentioned how she always spoke to her tutors about how important photography was and wrote her dissertation about how photography could be a fine art and the year after she left, they started a mixed media course which had photography. Now Brighton is quite famous for having a very good photography course and she believes she had a small part to play in the starting of the Photography course. So, although with difficulties she managed to get a photography degree.

During her degree show a member of the Observer magazine was there and she got hired from them as a member of the Young observer, the section at the back of the magazine where she worked as a photographer, taking photographs of young children and anything related to the young observer. In 1981, she started working at the Photographer’s Gallery. Cheatle mentioned that the 80’s was a fantastic time for photography because the UK was starting to catch up with America as a lot of people like art directors, advertising and many more were beginning to connect. During those years Cheatle was very successful and despite the fact that she had a one-year-old her boss at the time Sue Davies, owner of the Photographers Gallery, told Zelda that she should open up her own gallery and that is what she did. She quotes it was a very brave thing to do as there were not many other photography galleries at the time that had survived commercially in London and hers was the first one. Other galleries such as Hamilton Gallery and others followed but hers was the first. People knew Cheatle for a decade whilst she was working in the Photographer’s gallery and she then had her own gallery for two decades.

She then set up a photography fund which she didn’t have much idea about. She had a very exciting time building a collection but what she was not told about when she started that job and signed the contract was that she had to find the money to build the collection as well as build the collection and make it famous and publish it and the minimum had to be 5 million and it was quite a big quantum leap, she had to take. She managed to get it done in the end and made five and a half million pounds with which she bought the fantastical huge Russian collection Eve Arnold vintage print and amazing pictures from the 20th century and some 21st century. After she finished at the fund she started to do freelance curating, where she spent a big part of one year in China bringing yang pressins exhibition from chang ching to Wuhan. She did quite a lot of work in the Middle East, curated a very big show of 168 photographers in Dubai. She’s travelled a lot but enjoyed being in London this year, it has given her time to focus on her book.

Projects

Cecil Beaton project

Cecil Beaton was one of the great British photographers, he made himself part of a very elite kind of society and he ended up being the Royal photographer. He travelled a lot and he photographed a lot and the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg which is one of the wonderful museums of the world decided that they wanted to make their significant exhibition of 2020 and they they wanted it to be a photography show. They decided to make it a British photography show and they chose Cecil Beaten so maybe about 18 months ago or two years ago and she was asked to be the consultant on this exhibition. Cheatle has previously worked with the Cecil beaten archive which was owned by Sotheby's Anne and so she felt very confident to work with the Hermitage.

Cheatle is also working on two different books:

First book: people who have given her amazing stories, 68 interviews and pictures that they have chosen. She asked them what was the photograph that changed your life.

Second book: about Sue Davies, who started Photographer’s Gallery where Zelda worked throughout the 80’s. Cheatle he became close friends with Sue who died last year and because of the closeness she had with her Zelda was going through all the boxes in her house sorting things out with what things were to be kept. She had an idea to create a book about how Sue got to the point of starting the photographer’s gallery.

Writing a book about how Sue got to the point of starting the photographers Gallery and what the landscape of photography was 50 years ago it's so different now. She says how us students probably assume that every museum has photographs and there's music that the collections have got photography in them and that there's many places we can see photography and how 50 years ago it wasn't like that. She been commissioning different people that were around at the time.

During lockdown Zelda did a lot of judging. She did some judging for the Ian parry scholarship, international photo journalistic competition for anyone under 25 interested in documentary photography. There were 1,000 entries for that.

She was also deputy chair for the Hundred Heroines which is a newly launched charity. Del Baretts who was previously at the royal photographic society, launched hundred heroines where every year there will be new heroines who will be nominated then chosen. There was a mixture of work from people from all the over the world which Zelda was really impressed with.

Her tips that will help us in the future:

getting to connect with people
going to portfolio reviews: Zelda did an online one this year for Format in Derby ,100 reviewers with people from magazine editors, museum curators and many more from across the whole field who do not get paid to be part of the reviewers although the organisations ask for a small fee from people who want to have their work reviewed. Other people who are part of the reviewers are for example festival directors, gallery owners. another organiser that does portfolio reviews is Mimi Mollica, offspring photo meet. Zelda recommended for us to do this because it gives us a 20-minute chance to get experience with talking to people about our work allowing us to build our confidence
going to festivals, looking at shows and meeting people. an example of one is Peckham 24, online festival for new, young contemporary photographers. festivals are not only a chance for you to see other people’s work but to also show people your own work in portfolio format and before you would go to the festivals with your portfolio printed out and you would be talking to people about your work and showing your work to them. Zelda mentioned that being good at what you do I key but you also have to meet the right people and getting along with them

Feedback on website

I had the chance to show Zelda my website that I was working on to get feedback from her.

First page that I showed her was the events page of G&A engagement and she liked certain images like the one with the rings and the one with the heart hand pose. I mentioned how this was my first couple shoot and she commented on how it looks like they liked me as a photographer which is nice.

Another page from my website that I showed her was the nature page. A question she asked was which of the photographs are my favourite and I answered the question by saying that all the images that I chose to put on my website are my favourite. She commented on this photograph and said how it looks more like a Chinese painting than a photograph and so I then went on to explain how I took this photograph and how it is a photograph of a printed photograph. i took a photograph of flowers reflected onto a mirror, printed it out, placed the same flowers over the print then retook the photograph using a camera stand.

My fashion page is the last page from my website that I showed her. She asked if I am staying in London at the moment and I explained how my parents are Kosovan and that I was born and bred here in London. I talked a bit about the project that these photographs were for, the identity project and how I chose to look at identity through culture and fashion. After seeing that page she commented on how ‘she liked how I was picking up on people’s cultural identity and how she thinks it is an important thing and she thinks that actually as we are in this year now that we have to be much more conscious of people’s identity's much more I think this is a really important thing to keep going with.

This was a very interesting talk seeing what projects Zelda Cheatle has been working on or has worked on. What I liked the most from the talk was how even though she may have had difficulties during her work she still pushed through and finished the work, this will be something I will take from the talk whilst doing my own projects.

For more information about Zelda Cheatle read below:

Website: http://www.zeldacheatle.com/

All images are screenshots from the Industry Talk presentation or otherwise have the links to the website where they are from.