Mike Brodie
by Grady Rajagopalan
October 23, 2025
by Grady Rajagopalan
October 23, 2025
Mike Brody. “A Period of Juvenile Prosperity.” 2004-2008.
Mike Brodie was 17 when he hopped a train for the first time in 2003. The photographer’s teenage desire for adventure led him to a counterculture that lived in the underbelly of late-stage capitalism — train hoppers. Brodie lived with train hoppers for a year before photographing his vagabond experiences with a Polaroid camera, beginning a series he would later title “A Period of Juvenile Prosperity” (2004-2008). Known as “Polaroid Kidd,” Brodie’s photographs gained notoriety for their romantic, unflinching, and explicit depiction of trainhopping life — one with little company and void of government and higher orders. His work expresses a sentiment of freedom that resonates with those on the outside — a nomadic lifestyle unbound by the stresses of the new digital age. With jarring framing and motion blur, Brodie candidly presents himself as the secondary subject, while the audience questions how the photographer got there at all. By fusing drug use and danger, fear and comfort, and bitter cold and companionship, Brodie brings nuance to the culture he documents and introduces the audience to an unfamiliar lifestyle free from traditional bounds. Residing within the rail system — the veins that pump resources and power through the nation — the trainhoppers Brodie lived with, and later documented, provide viewers a glimpse into a culture just outside the reach of the American capitalist empire.