A Period of Juvenile Prosperity — Mike Brodie

This is the book that detonated Mike Brodie’s name across the art and photography world in 2013 — a raw, mythic document of American youth adrift, published by Twin Palms. Brodie, who rode the rails across the U.S. as a teenager, shot thousands of images with a Nikon he found in a car seat, but it was this tightly edited sequence of 60 four-color plates that crystallised a visual language between Nan Goldin and Jacob Holdt, Araki and Anders Petersen — all grit, tenderness, dust, and ache. In the image shown, two train-hoppers curl asleep in what looks like the bed of a freight car — dirt-caked, bracelet-stacked, faces flushed with exhaustion and intimacy. The photograph feels both forensic and mythological, a portrait of freedom’s price in rust and sunburn.

The large 28 x 33 cm format gives these images space to breathe, each plate rich with the hues of analog print: rust red, sun-faded blue, oil black. The book’s title, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, is ironic and true at once — this is a record of youth in its most precarious and elemental form. For Darwin, this edition holds value as a primary document of a subculture rarely seen with such clarity — and as a benchmark in the visual history of American wanderlust.

Technical Sheet
Title: A Period of Juvenile Prosperity
Artist / Author: Mike Brodie
Date: January 2013
Technique / Printing Method: Four-color offset
Medium / Materials: Hardcover photobook
Dimensions: 28 x 33 cm
Pages: 104
Plates: 60 four-color
Publisher / Editor: Twin Palms Publishers
ISBN: 978-1-936611-02-7
Condition: NEW