Mike Brodie

photography by MIKE BRODIE interview by KEN MILLER   Mike Brodie likes trains significantly more than he likes photographs. In fact, it is not completely clear if he likes photographs at all. Yet the ones he has taken are singularly beautiful. Brodie spent several years crisscrossing the United States as part of a loose network of itinerant wanderers who travel for free by catching rides on commercial freight trains and sometimes sleeping in the forest. That community is documented in Brodie’s book of romantically evocative photos, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, from Twin Palms Publishers. Looking at these images, filled with moody, rich colors, dynamic compositions, and subtly confounding subject matter, it’s hard to believe that this was all just a passing hobby for him. When I spoke to Mike, he was visiting the world’s largest train yard in preparation for his new job as a mechanic for the Union Pacific…