My fascination with alternative ways of life has been a recurring theme throughout this archive since the beginning. I want to show people who step off the rails of the societal norms and ride somewhere else entirely. The images below belong to this dropout category par excellence and are amongst the most authentic glimpses into unseen parallel worlds.
Mike Brodie rode his first freight train as a bored seventeen-year-old kid from Pensacola, Florida, looking for an adventure. Between 2004 and 2008 he documented his life and the communities he rode with — first with a found Polaroid camera, and after the production of the film was discontinued, with a Nikon 35mm.
Brodie identifies as a hobo to this day, but also mentions that living like that for too long might crush you in the end. The fleeting nature of this subculture is one reason why it is so hard to document it over a longer period of time, in a realistic and honest way.
