A Period of Juvenile Prosperity
At the age of 17, Mike Brodie hopped his first train close to his home in Pensacola thinking he would visit a friend in Mobile, Alabama. Instead the train went in the opposite direction to Jacksonville, Florida. Shortly after, Brodie found a Polaroid camera stuffed behind a carseat. With no training in photography and coke-bottle glasses, the instant camera was an opening for Brodie to document his experiences. When the Polaroid film he used was discontinued, Brodie switched to 35mm film and a sturdy 1980s camera. He spent years crisscrossing the U.S. amassing a collection, now appreciated as an impressive archive of American travel photography. His amazing images of hitchhikers and train hoppers are published in the book A Period of Juvenile Prosperity.
