A Period of Juvenile Prosperity

I love these photos by Mike Brodie. He's an untrained American travel photographer who, aged 18, began to ride the railroads. He did so on and off for the next 5 years to 2008, and covered about 50,000 miles, all on trains. He documented his travels and the friends he made along the way, and the results are wonderfully romantic. Most of the kids he photographed were riding the trains for a few years for kicks, or as a kind of rite of passage, rather than a complete lifestyle choice. "A lot of the kids I knew have since gone back to their old lives. It was something they did for whatever reason before they settled down. Some were running away, some were out for adventure. It's like being homeless by choice, I guess, but, living like that you learn a lot of American values like self-reliance, independence."

You can buy the book here and see more of Mike's photos here.