“Failing”: After a ten-year hiatus, Mike Brodie returns with his highly anticipated third monograph.
Few photographers today are as intriguing as Mike Brodie, also known as “The Polaroid Kid.” His name carries an almost mythical resonance, shaped by the impact of his powerful early work and his subsequent, abrupt departure from the photography world.
His debut monograph, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, was released in 2013 to widespread acclaim. Beginning in 2004, when Brodie was in his late teens, he spent four years freight-hopping across America, documenting fellow rail riders and drifters in a reckless, wildfire pursuit of adventure and freedom, a tradition echoed in the words of Steinbeck, Kerouac, London, and Woody Guthrie, among many others
It was followed by Dirt and Bone, a collection of his earliest images, taken on a Polaroid camera before he acquired the Nikon F3, which he used for his debut monograph — and thenceforth.
The desire for adventure, for the open road — or the open rail, as it were — feels deeply ingrained in the American psyche, fueling some of the most iconic imagery in contemporary photography, from Robert Frank’s seminal work to the color pioneers like Stephen Shore and 乔尔·斯特恩菲尔德. Brodie may belong to this tradition, yet his style remains uniquely his own. His lack of formal training and his closeness with the people he photographs engender raw, intimate, and deeply personal images, fleeting, unguarded moments captured by a participant rather than an outsider looking in.
In that way, he has more in common with Nan Goldin than the luminaries, as mentioned earlier. Goldin entered the photography world with a style wholly her own, free from the shackles of a formal photography education, unflinchingly personal and compelling. Likewise Brodie. As Danny Lyon put it in his review of A Period of Juvenile Prosperity 为了 Aperture, “he leapt into the life of picture-making as if he was the first to do it.”
A decade has passed since Brodie’s second book, a decade in which his legend has only grown in his absence. He settled in Nashville, worked as a diesel mechanic, and eventually moved across the country for love. He married, bought land along the dusty Winnemucca road Johnny Cash sang about in “I’ve Been Everywhere,” started a business, built a house, and put down roots. When that life unraveled, the open road called him back. Through it all, his camera remained by his side. Failing is the artistic culmination of those ten years.
A Period of Juvenile Prosperity was a masterpiece in youthful abandon, a raw yet beautiful encapsulation of the kind of freedom you only feel when you have nothing to lose. Even in its grittier moments, there was an undeniable sense of hope, of optimism, of running full speed into the unknown without a second thought. The golden light, the expansive landscapes; it all felt untethered. Weightless.
Failing, however, is something else. Growing older doesn’t feel gradual; it sneaks up on you. One day, you wake up and realize the dreams you had as a kid didn’t quite pan out. The beautiful delusion of youth fades, replaced by something harder to swallow. These images feel more confined, more fragmented, perhaps a reflection of that reality.
The people depicted — hitchhikers, drifters, kindred spirits caught in-between — faces marked by exhaustion, defiance, or something harder to define. Maybe they were once, like him, youthful travelers, crossing the vast American plains on rust-cloaked train cars, chasing an untamed dream of freedom, now weathered by time and circumstance. Addiction and pain linger alongside fleeting moments of beauty and joy. Symbols emerge in discarded objects and quiet gestures. Animals, both alive and dead. Brodie’s world is raw and unvarnished. Sometimes tender. Sometimes brutal. But always deeply felt.
The openness of his debut has given way to something more introspective. Yet still, the road remains almost ever-present. Often seen through dust-cloaked windows. A constant pull. Magnetic. Impossible to ignore.
Brodie’s eye remains as sharp as ever, capturing that intangible poetry of everyday life on the margins. Failing is different to his earlier work, but it’s still unequivocally him. And though it might not make the impact of his debut, in some ways, it’s even more powerful.
“Maybe I’m walking down the highway all day, thinking, what am I doing with my life? And then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, some magical thing happens. And I take ten photos and it reinvigorates the feeling. And I realize, I am on the right path. This is okay.”
所有图片版权所有 Mike Brodie
Failing is published by Twin Palms and is available via their 网站。.