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Hopping on a train has an entirely different meaning for artist Mike Brodie – no bustling train stations or tickets, but the memories of free spirits, the open road ahead, and the feeling of wind rushing past in great exhilaration. A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, recently opened at M+B Gallery, is Brodie’s homage to the three years of youth that he spent hitchhiking on freight trains while living the ultimate itinerant life. The photographs capture the train’s movement across blurred fields of grass, with individuals in mid-transit from train to train and other dreamers staring off into the sunset. Yet idealization does not run wild, for the realism of the conscious choice of lifestyle, accompanied by weariness of travel and the grit and dirt of trains, grounds the series in poignancy. Still, Brodie allows us to understand that juvenile prosperity is something that cannot be measured by dollars, but that which is measured by freedom. A Period of Juvenile Prosperity’s signed book available at Family Bookstore $65.
