Polaroid kidd mike brodie biography

Mike Brodie Comes of Age

Mike Brodie was born in 1985. He was given the moniker of the “Polaroid Kidd”. He is an American photographer. He set off, while still a teen from the years 2004 to 2008 and freight hopped across the US, photographing people and a lifestyle that most people thought faded during the Great Depression. Yet here in the 21st century, he mingled with vagabonds and hobos. Does Webster’s Dictionary still list the word “hobo”? I guess so. In 2013 his book “A Period of Juvenile Prosperity” was published. Although he used a SX-70, he eventually switched to 35mm. (Nikon F3) In 2015 his next book was released, “Tones of Dirt and Bone”.

From Polaroid to Nikon F3

His mother worked most of her life as a maid and cashier. Almost single handedly raising a young boy. Dad was still in prison in Arizona. When they moved to Pensacola, Florida in 2000, Brodie got into the punk rock scene. In 2003, he witnessed a young couple huddled close together on a passing railroad car. He was curious. So, at 18, Brodie started freight hopping across the US. He started photographing his new surroundings, which were basically the well hidden train-hopper and squatter scene. Hobos? Initially he was using a Polaroid SX-70 given to him. When Polaroid discontinued making film (2006 or so), he started using a Nikon F3. Digital was way too expensive for him at the time. And I doubt any 2006 digital cameras could ever handle the “lifestyle” anyway.

Early Successes

During his first trip cross country , he met Paul Schiek, who was the founder of TBW Books. Schiek helped Brodie produce two bodies of work from this period: “Tones of Dirt and Bone” and “A Period of Juvenile Prosperity”. After exhibiting in various galleries, they became books. Actually, the images in “Tones of Dirt and Bone”, although produced earlier with t

Brodie’s decade-long record of his transient American life, brimming with poignant stories of those he encountered along the way

Mike Brodie’s first monograph, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, touched down more than decade ago, depicting his fellow rail-riders and drifters in a rebellious and wildfire pursuit of adventure and freedom. « Brodie leapt into the life of picture-making as if he was the first to do it, » Danny Lyon wrote about the book in Aperture. Next came Tones of Dirt and Bone, a collection of earlier SX-70 pictures Brodie made when photography first led him to hopping freights, when he was known as « The Polaroid Kidd. » And then Brodie seemed to disappear from the art world as suddenly and mysteriously as he’d first appeared. Maybe his vanishing was another myth. Maybe it was just a necessary retreat. « I was divorcing myself from all that, » he says. « I was growing up. I was pursuing this other life. »
If A Period of Juvenile Prosperity was a cinematic dream, Failing is the awakening and the reckoning: a raw, wounded and searingly honest photographic diary of a decade marked by love and heartbreak, loss and grief. Here is the flip side of the American dream, seen from within; here is bearing close witness to the brutal chaos of addiction and death; here are front-seat encounters with hitchhikers and kindred wanderers on society’s edges, sustained by the ragtag community of the road. Failing often exists in darkness but is tuned to grace. Brodie’s eye stays forever open to the strange and fleeting beauty that exists in forgotten places–the open country and the lost horizons that sweep past dust-spattered windows in a spectral blur.
Michael Brodie (born 1985) is the author of A Period of Juvenile Prosperity (2013) and Tones of Dirt and Bone (2015). He lives with his girlfriend in Biloxi, Mississippi, where the railroad is never far, just hidden in the trees from view. Unseen, it rattl

As the millennium roared to a resounding end, a young teen named Mike Brodie and his mother rode a Greyhound bus across the United States to begin a new life in Florida. "My mom is a Christian, and God told her to leave Arizona," Mike says. "My dad was just getting out of prison, and she didn't want to confront the realities of getting back with him."

They arrived in Pensacola around Christmas and stayed with family until his mother was able to afford a place of their own, right off Burgess Road. The house was located just a couple of blocks from the a major railroad mainline back when the city played a significant role on the Gulf Coast corridor. Although Mike was not particularly interested in trains as a kid, as he grew into adolescence, things began to change. 

Young, restless, and possessed with a sense of urgency to explore, Mike would take off on his BMX bike, hit the streets and hang out with friends. But the thrill of two wheels didn't quite suffuse the sense of boredom that he felt. "The rest of my time was spent at home, lost, listening to melancholic music, playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater, trying to watch dial-up internet porn, and playing the same Red Hot Chilli Peppers album over and over," says Mike.

One day in 2003, while washing dishes, Mike gazed out the window and saw a young couple sitting close together in the car of a freight train as it zoomed along the tracks. Although it was just a passing vision, something clicked. "It showed me that a train could take me away," says Mike. "I can't determine if it was punk or simply curiosity and rebellion that led me to the rails. Punk made me feel less guilty about being rebellious, committing petty crimes, and breaking laws. But punk didn't teach me DIY, and it surely didn't teach me to think for myself. I feel I was born with a natural sense of wonder and a curiosity to explore the world and fix things."

At the time, Mike was staying with his gir