Documenting unruly women- Mary Corrigall meets Jodi Bieber, the documentary photographer who has caused a buzz with her latest study of daring women

Warm, unpretentious and frequently smiling, Jodi Bieber is immediately likeable. Her congeniality has no doubt worked in her favour, especially as a documenter photographer with an interest in insinuating herself into realms far removed from her own white middle-class milieu. Certainly with her latest exhibition, entitled Real Beauty, which sees women of all shapes and sizes posing in their underwear, it must have taken some convincing to have persuaded all these women to allow Bieber to capture their bodies, flaws and all. Revealingly, Bieber draws a blank when I ask about her relationship with her subjects. The inference is that whatever the nature of the afflations she strikes with her subjects it isn’t premeditated.
“I think that if you are honest people can pick that up. I try to capture something of who they (my subjects) really are. It might not be who they are, but who I think they are.”
In Real Beauty Bieber assumed a hands-off approach, allowing her subjects to choose how they would like to present themselves. While some clearly pander to the male gaze, others are confrontational assuming defiant poses.
“It is a rebellion, the ultimate reason the women did the project was that they wanted to make a stand for real beauty. It talks about how we present ourselves in front of the camera as women. For me it is about a celebration (of beauty) and going against the media.”

After enjoying a long career as a photojournalist – albeit that she eschews the title - Bieber is acutely aware of the inner workings of the media. Upon completing an informal education in photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, she joined The Star newspaper as a trainee, covering the
years of South Africa’s transition to democracy.
Photography immediately appealed to Bieber as it allowed her to express herself and delve into other ways of living.
“Photography is a tool, I can’t paint, I can’t draw. Coming from a middle class background, photography gave me that opportunity to cross over to the other side, that privileged situation where I could really explore what is happening in this country.”
When Bieber first entered the realm of photography in the early nineties, the political situation in South Africa was volatile. This
shaped Bieber’s early aesthetic.
“I was posted at Ulundi (where pre election violence was rife) they were dark times. My whole perspective on life changed because of all the death (I witnessed). My mind was dark and that’s where I was for ten years; looking at those kinds (of subjects).”

The work Bieber produced during that period of her career featured in her acclaimed 2006 book, Between Dogs and Wolves, which documents South Africa’s dark underbelly, capturing gang life
in townships and the destitute. A sense of hopelessness pervades images of impoverished children wandering through a desolate, neglected urban landscape.
In the mid-nineties came Bieber’s biggest break when she was invited to participate in the prestigious World Press master class in Holland. After completing the course, she was catapulted into the international media, freelancing for magazines such as Geo, Stern and The New York Times magazine. During this time Bieber’s focus shifted from covering news events to documenting real-life narratives.
It was Linda Givon, founder of the Goodman Gallery empire, who recognised qualities in Bieber’s photography that aligned it with art. Although Bieber feels that her work has always straddled the art realm, at first she didn’t grasp Givon’s interest.
“I didn’t understand what it meant. She told me she had a show for me in Belgium and I told her I was busy shooting.” But with a magazine editors losing interest in documentary photography, Bieber was grateful that art galleries presented an alternative platform to showcase her work.“A lot of photojournalism is about recording and while my work has appeared in the media and that’s where I come from I believe that I have never recorded. I believe I have always interpreted. I hate that word photojournalist, I am a photographer.” Bieber says its art critics who have defined her work, invested her work with meaning, not the art gallery context that has begged new readings. Ultimately, Bieber is only interested in bringing her work closer to the general public.“I have shown my photographs in a village and in an art gallery, it makes no difference to me.” • Real Women is showing at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg