photography/ artist themes

Use image links , link each to a seprate category. Each category has posts from one artist, which would be displayed as an archive page. The archive could show thumnails in a grid just like a gallery. And of course each thumb would link to the full post.

You might look at a theme like custom community, it can show categories in a nice looking slider, as well as show category archives as a grid with image links.

When you say “want to charge” you mean sell products from the site?or charge members to sing up/show content? both?

Appreciate your comment but not sure I am good eneough at WP to do this.. Was hoping to locate a theme that was already sorted!!
I would like to charge for the listing

It sounds like what you want is really a matter of selling author privilages on a blog, that is unless you plan to create the content layouts for the users yourself. Which would probably less of a pain in the long run. Otherwise you have to answer support requests. But it’s possible either way.

Once you can set up a theme with content how you like, I might suggest learning a membership plugin. I’ve used a plugin called s2Member which had great flexibility.