Ariel Zambelich is a freelance Visuals Editor, Art Director, and photojournalist based in Baltimore, Md.

Her photography clients include the New York Times + NY Times Magazine, Huck Magazine (UK), WIRED + WIRED Japan, Bloomberg Businessweek, the Nobel Foundation, the Atlantic, NatureBridge, California Sunday Magazine, the Harvard Business Review, Etiqueta Negra, M le magazine du Monde, and The FADER. She has also done freelance editing work for the Matte agency, Buzzfeed News, Outside Magazine, and AARP.

A Los Angeles native, she graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. She attended the Eddie Adams Workshop in 2008, was nominated for World Press Photo's Joop Swart Masterclass in 2009, and attended the Kalish Workshop for photo editing in 2012.

She was most recently Visuals Director at the Baltimore Banner, a local nonprofit news organization, where she led a team of journalists collaborating on stories told through photojournalism, illustration, and design. Previously she was Managing Photo Editor for the Wall Street Journal with a focus on Politics + National News, Senior Photo Editor for The Intercept, Supervising Editor of Photography + Art Director for NPR Visuals, and a photo editor for WIRED. She spent several years co-directing a documentary photography gallery in San Francisco.

She co-edited Pictures on the Radio, featuring the work of the late photojournalist David P. Gilkey, and Cigar City, a book on the legacy of the cigar industry in Tampa featuring the work of photographer Zack Wittman.

She is a board member of Authority Collective and a general member of Diversify.Photo, organizations that amplify the voices of female-identifying and minority photographers and visual journalists. She also served on the Organizing Committee for the Freelance Solidarity Project, a union for freelance media workers, and was a member of the 2019 Cohort of ONA's Women's Leadership Accelerator.

Get in touch!

If you are looking to hire me as a photojournalist, editor or a consultant, please email: ariel.zambelich [at] gmail.com.