“If you want to get more out of life, Ron, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty. And so, Ron, in short, get out of Salton City and hit the Road.”
Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
Have you ever felt a pulsing sensation to leave everything behind in search for adventure? What if you could just escape everyday life in exchange for freedom and possibility? Would you do it?
In 2003, 18 year-old Mike Brodie was living in Pensacola, Florida. He was a high school student who worked at the supermarket bagging groceries. A friend had given him a Polaroid camera with which he taught himself how to take images. Then, out of the blue, something drove him to hop on a freight train, and so began a three-day trip to Jacksonville.
As he wandered on this experience out of the ordinary routine he started to take pictures of his would-be travel companions. Despite the images being taken with a 35mm camera, he started posting them on Tumblr under the name of Polaroid Kidd in 2004. Then in 2008, as spontaneously as his dive into the unknown had begun, Brodie left the life of drifting from train to train, as well as photography.
As he told The Guardian when his series A Period of Juvenile Prosperity was exhibited and published in a book in 2013, “A lot of the kids I knew have since gone back to their old lives. It was something they did for whatever reason before they settled down. Some were running away, some were out for adventure. It’s like being homeless by choice, I guess, but, living like that you learn a lot of American values like self-reliance, independence.”
By all accounts Brodie has shifted from the adventurous to a more stable lifestyle. He’s currently based in Oakland, California working as a car mechanic. Yet the essence of the free-spirited young people facing life as an open road continues to fascinate viewers and art critics worldwide.
“Don’t settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.”
Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
You can see more of Mike Brodie’s pictures on his photography website and his Tumblr.
