Mike Brodie - Polaroid Kid

50 Polaroid, coming into a foil stamped case
Photograph(s) by Mike Brodie
17 x 13 cm
Language: English
Rubber Band, CMYK Offset and Silk Screened
Publisher: Stanley Barker
2023

At the age of 17, Mike Brodie left home, hoping a freight train to Jacksonville, Florida. His first trip lasted little more than a few days but was the start of a lifelong journey that would see him become one of the most intuitive photographers of his generation.

On finding an abandoned Polaroid camera stuffed behind a car seat in 2004, Brodie began to produce a sprawling document of his journey riding the rails across the expanse of North America, alongside a tight-knit community of young punks and hobos, all searching for an authentic experience of the life less ordinary.

This new collection of masterfully reproduced polaroids was made by Brodie when travelling under the name The Polaroid Kid. 

The 50 polaroids are presented in a bespoke silkscreened grey-board case, fastened by a heavy gauge elastic band - a design inspired by the punk ethos that the people pictured lived by, and the utilitarian train cars in which they ride.