A Period of Juvenile Prosperity is a stunning photographic work by Mike Brodie that captures the spirit of youth and freedom. Brodie, a self-taught photographer from Arizona, embarked on a train-hopping adventure across America in his early twenties, documenting the lives of the young and restless who similarly eschewed the traditional norms of society.
Brodie began his travels across the United States in the early 2000s, hopping on and off trains with fellow travelers and documenting their daily lives with a camera. His photographic style is raw and unfiltered, capturing the gritty reality of life on the road. At the same, the images are also beautiful and gentle, and shows the intimate side of life for this community.
The people in Brodie's photographs are often young and carefree, train-hoppers living on the fringes of society. The work is very much an insider’s account and it is only as an insider that he was able to have access to intimate moments.
Brodie’s life itself is interesting. He writes about it in this, the fourth edition of A Period of Juvenile Prosperity by Twin Palms Publishing. He was not a trained photographer. He found a Polaroid one day and started taking pictures. And when he went train-hopping, he brought his camera with him and took pictures. He took some 7000 pictures. He won a photo contest. He then went on to become a mechanic.
In summary, this is a photographic work that captures people living on the fringes of society. It celebrates youth and freedom during a certain, perhaps fleeting, period of their lives. It shows them with empathy and beauty. It shows them, as the title says, in their period of juvenile prosperity.
For me, these images are, of course, beautiful and they celebrate youth and freedom in this section of a fringe society. They are strangely familiar yet just beyond knowing, and that is perhaps what draws me to this work.