Mike Brodie: Capturing The Modern Vagrants of America

Mike Brodie’s photographs take you on a fast-paced visual journey guaranteed to rattle bones. 

The young photographer’s images are confrontational visual narratives of unadvertised, illicit adventures of the runaway youth. In a society that finds comfort in flawless commercialized imagery, his work offers a candidness many instinctively avoid.

In 2004, Mike began traveling across the United States utilizing the country’s vast system of railroads and photographed friends he had met along the way. His images are so visceral, you could feel in the stomach the grinding of the train bogies against the railroad track and be affected by the sense of forlorn and weariness in his friends’ faces.

Mike has captured the America once romanticized by Kerouac, and to a certain extent, the old America that Robert Frank religiously documented. It’s the America that still remains alive, but is rusting amidst all the technology and progress.

Mike is the representative of the unrepresented. His work is a cultural treasure that needs to be seen and admired. Although it is sad to know that that he has given up photography altogether to become a mechanic, we're quite fortunate that he has at least allowed the world a glimpse into the breathtaking world of railroad punks through his photographs.