Acclaimed home-grown photographer Jodi Bieber has created an open-ended essay which is a celebration and a portrait of life in Soweto today.

The importance of Soweto in the collective consciousness is hard to overstate. It registers as a place born of resistance, perhaps even embodying the South African struggle for freedom.

But the birth of Kwaito is attributed to Soweto too. And beyond the grand narratives, there is, and always was, a proliferation of dancing, art and fashion in this place defined by its energy and cosmopolitan nature. Labelling and unlabelling, claiming and discarding, Sowetans have created Soweto a new - a phenomenon that is celebrated in this photographic publication which contemplates daily lived realities, where here, as elsewhere, South Africans are continually reinventing themselves and their urban space.

Jodi Bieber's instinctive wandering throughout Soweto, and her astonishing yet careful study of the people, the place and the time, offers us an opportunity to reflect on the mystery of this
changing space.

Published by Jacana Media in association with
the Goethe-Institut South Africa.