South African photographer Jodi Bieber has recently been in the limelight after she clinched the 2010 World Press Photo award for her haunting portrait of a brutally mutilated Afghan girl.
Her sudden rise to fame however belies a life long dedication to using photography to document and discover South Africa. Between Darkness and Light, a new exhibition of Biebers work curated by Liza Essers and Storm Janse Van Rensburg tracks this trajectory. Focusing on the ‘twilight” that Bieber experienced in the decade following the advent of democracy in South Africa, the show is a selection of work from 1993 to 2004, primarily revealing Bieber’s more rarely shown independent series, as well as some of her earlier work as a press photographer. In each case her idiosyncratic style traverses and ultimately defies categorisations such as photojournalism and visual art. ‘It’s really about the twilight of the ten years that followed [the end of apartheid],” explains Bieber. ‘It’s between darkness and light.”
Goodman Gallery Cape, 3rd Floor, Fairweather House, 176 Sir Lowry Rd, Woodstock. Until April 30. Tel: 021 462 7573/4. Website: www.goodman-gallery.com.