Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
Tones of Dirt and Bone © Mike Brodie
tones-of-dirt-anad-bone-mike-brodie-13

WIN a copy of Mike Brodie’s photobook Tones of Dirt and Bone, courtesy of Twin Palms! All you have to do to enter the giveaway is follow us on Twitter (@fotografiamagaz) and share a link to this page, or simply retweet the below tweet.

WIN a copy of Mike Brodie’s photobook Tones of Dirt and Bone, courtesy of Twin Palms! All you have to do to enter the giveaway is follow us on Twitter (@fotografiamagaz) and share a link to this page, or simply retweet the below tweet.

Not on Twitter? Share this Facebook post instead, or reblog this on Tumblr. The contest will run until next Sunday 1 February at 12 AM – one winner will be chosen at random. Good luck!

***

Mike Brodie is a 28 year-old mechanic living in Oakland, California. Unlike many mechanics in Oakland or the entire world, however, from 2004 to 2008 Brodie has produced one of the most impressive, unique and popular photographic archives of the last ten years.

In 2004, at the age of 17, Mike hopped on a train from Pensacola, Florida to visit a friend in Mobile, Alabama – except the train was really going in the opposite direction, towards Jacksonville, Florida. But Mike mustn’t have felt too bad about taking the wrong train, in fact that journey inspired him to join the American community of rail-riders: for the next four years, he traveled across the USA jumping from one train to another, photographing his adventures and the many other train hoppers he met all along.

His first photobook, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, was published by Twin Palms in early 2013. It was a big sensation and hugely popular among photography lovers, a terrific series of photographs shot between 2006 and 2008 with a 35mm camera which romanticize and even mythologize the train hopping lifestyle. Dirty but free, the young subjects of Mike’s photographs are often seen in the action of jumping on the train or moving from one wagon to the other.

Twin Palms has recently published a new photobook by Mike Brodie, called Tones of Dirt and Bone. The book is a sort of a prequel to A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, as it contains the images Mike took during his early journeys, from 2004 to 2006. During those years, Mike photographed with the first camera he’s ever used, a Polaroid SX-70 which he had retrieved from behind a carseat. The Tones of Dirt and Bone images are much quieter than those in A Period of Juvenile Prosperity: it is mostly a collection of the portraits and still scenes that the Polaroid allowed him to take, characterized by the unique aesthetics of the now discontinued Time Zero film.

Probably the last book by Mike Brodie, who has now quit both train hopping and photography, Tones of Dirt and Bone shows us his incredible adventure from a different, equally interesting angle.

A Period of Juvenile Prosperity and Tones of Dirt and Bone are available to buy from the Twin Palms website.

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