New Sealed

Mike Brodie

Polaroid Kidd

SIGNED Mike Brodie

 

United Kingdom. STANLEY/BARKER. First edition. 2023. Text in English. Unpaged. SIGNED by Mike Brodie in purple on the back of one of the polaroids. New sealed copy.

The Polaroid Kidd is a perfect artefact of an earlier time: a box set of 50 facsimile Polaroids filled with a poetic romanticism, melancholy, faded nostalgia and a sense of longing that evoke a curious blend of old American values meets punk radicalism. Here in Mike’s photos, we disappear into a world that exists in the fleeting beauty of our deepest longings that go largely unfulfilled.

“Most riders initially attracted to this life are typically 16-25-year-old punks that have poor relationships with their father, or no father at all,” Mike says. “The lure of rails might offer hope, romance, redemption; some find it, but most don't. And ironically, most riders who live past their 30s and 40s denounce the lifestyle altogether, settle down, have children, cover up or get tattoos removed. Most won’t admit, but it’s what everyone was chasing all along: true love, a relationship, family, and permanence.”

This new collection of masterfully reproduced facsimile Polaroids was made by Brodie when traveling under the name The Polaroid Kid.

The 50 facsimile 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.

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.

SIGNED Mike Brodie.