A Period Of Juvenile Prosperity, Photographs by the Polaroid Kidd

From the Denver Post a photo essay that is as powerful as it is disturbing

For three years Mike Brodie hitchhiked and train hopped across the US, traveling over 50,000 miles through 46 states. Having no previous interest in photography, Mike Brodie began taking pictures only after he discovered an old Polaroid camera behind a car seat. With that same Polaroid camera, and later a 1980 Nikon F3, Brodie began documenting his travels. Eventually, Brodie began posting his photos online as a way to stay in touch with friends and people he had encountered along the way earning him the nickname “The Polaroid Kidd.”

In 2008, Brodie received the Baum Award for An Emerging American Photographer for work he did not even know had been submitted for consideration. Since receiving the Baum Award, Brodie’s photography has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, American PHOTO, and PDN and has been incorporated into the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Berkeley Museum of Art. In 2013, Twin Palms Publishers released a book of Brodie’s work, “A Period Of Juvenile Prosperity.”

While his photography has achieved wide success, Mike Brodie went on to school at the Nashville Auto-Diesel College and is now working as a mechanic in Oakland, California.

See the full set here