Jodi Bieber

If you’re here to learn about shutter speed, aperture and how to flex your new EOS R5, this is not the Playbox for you. Of course, those skills are critical to learn and to master quickly — so you can get to focus on what Jodi Bieber calls “the real stuff”. 

With her straight-shooting, real-talking, colourful style, the award-winning photographer is here to teach you something that goes beyond the tech and the mechanics: she’s here to teach you not to rely on your tools, but on the moment, and what you’ll really need to get up to speed on as a visual storyteller. 

In this introductory episode, she wastes no time in getting slap-bang to the heart of the matter by speaking to the truth of what lies beneath the lens: what it really means to “get the shot” and how, when you shoot, what a great photograph can trigger, how it can ripple, and how it can be remembered for what lies beneath it. This is Jodi Bieber.

She saw a lot of bad things, met a diverse range of people, and took a lot of average photographs. And she remembers all of it. South African born and bred Jodi Bieber recounts the snapshots of her own fated life that started with her purse being stolen at The Market Theatre, and led her to become one of the world’s most revered top 100 photographers to have influenced a decade (NY Times and CNN). 

Jodi explores the art of reference points and real moments, while teaching the marked importance of the visual diary: how to craft one, keep one and use one to inform the indelible mastery of a true visual artist. Grab your backpack; the real stuff starts here. 

From the streets of Soweto to the rippling neighbourhoods that elicit the heroes, the hardships and history of our times, Jodi lets you in on a personal visual tour of her acclaimed photographic series ‘Soweto’, which exhibited both locally and internationally. 

Jodi shares what she saw in those years from behind the lens, and how she built a series that became less about the township and more about the people. Discover what it takes to go deeper; to capture humanity in all its random beauty. 

In this episode, Jodi helps you structure your photographs into a story series that may one day matter to a country, to a continent… to the world.

So you’re armed with well-structured ideas, bold creativity, your camera (of course) and are ready to create a work of art. 

How do you go about getting the composition just right, and using elements like light, backgrounds and foregrounds to create the mood, the feeling and the atmosphere that makes a good photograph great? How do you go about capturing energy, expression and movement in just one frame? 

Well, hold onto your tripod because Jodi Bieber is here to share her inside tips and tricks into framing and creating the perfect shot.

From shooting film with her father’s Nikon FM while backpacking through Europe in the 80s to processing black-and-white prints of some of South Africa’s most iconic democratic moments in the darkroom of The Star, a lot has changed in terms of photography and editing for Jodi Bieber… 

Throughout the course of her stellar career, the tools, the rules, the tech and the trajectory of photography have done a full 180. Colour expanded the spectrum of black and white. Digital replaced analogue. The darkroom shut down and the wide-open frontier of PhotoShop made everything post-shoot possible. 

In this episode, Jodi shares how photography has transformed, how the new tools of the trade have revolutionised the art and the edit, how by “edit” we mean what you leave in and what you leave out, and how we can balance both the old and the new to embrace the best of both.

What happens when you access a women-only prison in South Africa with a Yashica Mat Camera, a tripod, a sound recorder and a vision in your back pocket? You take a slow, deep breath, cross your fingers and hang all your hopes on eight convicted women who are about to look you in the eyes and tell you why they killed their husbands. 

Exploring her never-to-be-forgotten, one-day experience in telling the story of “Women who Murdered Their Husbands”, as well as her body of work exploring “Survivors: Domestic Violence in South Africa”, Jodi Bieber shares the light, the dark and the courage of a photographer’s journey to tell the truth and capture the real picture. 

In this episode, you’ll also discover the why of her creations, and the how of her dichotomous photographic journey that took her from side-street murders to the birth of a country’s democracy to jail cells and a quirky love wall that eventually hooked the world to a light switch.

When the director asks Jodi, “Can you teach gut feel?” – something strange happens. A moment of silent contemplation with the indomitable photographer leads to the answer every budding visual artist is burning to know. 

To make it in a world designed to shake you, bruise you, twist you, inspire you and mostly, make you wait … and wait…and wait for the perfect shot – it comes to light in this episode that the art of anticipation sits at the epicentre of most award-winning work. 

But can it be taught? Let’s see.

In a small, low-lit, shared bedroom of a women’s shelter in Kabul, Afghanistan, Jodi Bieber meets an 18-year-old woman by the name of Bibi Aisha. The year is 2010, and the candid moment of real connection that transpires between two women — a South African photographer and a child-bride whose nose and ears have been punitively sliced from her face — will change the trajectory of both their lives, forever. 

Up-close, personal and allowing us the privilege of being veritable flies on the wall, Jodi Bieber takes us into the unspoken intimacy she creates and shares with Bibi Aisha, which led to a TIME Magazine cover that imprinted on the minds of millions, worldwide, and earned Jodi the highest accolade of World Press Photo of the Year. 

How does trusting your gut get you to such a pinnacle? And what happens to you, and your career, when you hit it? In a goosebump-replete episode, Jodi talks us through what can only be described as a highlight of her career, and how a photograph — an iconic, to-be-remembered-forever photograph — can hit, pierce and penetrate the deepest parts of our humanity in ways that simply cannot be expressed in words.

As a photographer, dealing with subject matter is just part of the job. But what takes place when that ‘matter’ is human? What transforms in a room when the only thing between the photographer and her subject is the camera? And…is the camera even there at all? 

In Jodi’s universe, you learn the incomparable power of human interaction and how good photographers will build a set while legendary photographers will build a connection. 

Discover the delicate skill of building intimacy as Jodi Bieber imparts the bridge to conversation and connection inside a shoot; a lesson that will determine the outcome of your image and the ultimate signature of your craft. This is where the true magic lies.     

Jodi Bieber’s juxtaposed series entitled “Between Dogs and Wolves – Growing up with South Africa”, rang out along some of the greatest exhibition halls across South Africa, the UK and Europe. 

What was set to be a detailed exploration of the lives of young South African gangsters against the backdrop of a beautiful country, with horrifying social disparity, turned out to be one of Jodi’s highest testaments to her own life as a South African and an even larger salute to the triumph of the human spirit. 

In her parting episode, Jodi teaches what really sits behind the lens of the human struggle – what it feels like, tastes like, cries like and photographs like. Named as one of The Hundred Heroines by the Royal Photographic Society, Jodi soaks you inside the brave side of the human condition. 

Sit back and revel in the company of a real doyenne of the visual arts; a bold one, a courageous one: a photographic artist that’s come to live two sides of every story, and to teach you – and the world - how to see.