Brodies decadelong record of his transient American life brimming with poignant stories of those he encountered along the wayMike Brodies first monograph A Period of Juvenile Prosperity touched down more than decade ago depicting his fellow railriders and drifters in a rebellious and wildfire pursuit of adventure and freedom. Brodie leapt into the life of picturemaking as if he was the first to do it Danny Lyon wrote about the book in Aperture. Next came Tones of Dirt and Bone a collection of earlier SX70 pictures Brodie made when photography first led him to hopping freights when he was known as The Polaroid Kidd. And then Brodie seemed to disappear from the art world as suddenly and mysteriously as hed first appeared. Maybe his vanishing was another myth. Maybe it was just a necessary retreat. I was divorcing myself from all that he says. I was growing up. I was pursuing this other life.If A Period of Juvenile Prosperity was a cinematic dream Failing is the awakening and the reckoning a raw wounded and searingly honest photographic diary of a decade marked by love and heartbreak loss and grief. Here is the flip side of the American dream seen from within here is bearing close witness to the brutal chaos of addiction and death here are frontseat encounters with hitchhikers and kindred wanderers on societys edges sustained by the ragtag community of the road. Failing often exists in darkness but is tuned to grace. Brodies eye stays forever open to the strange and fleeting beauty that exists in forgotten placesthe open country and the lost horizons that sweep past dustspattered windows in a spectral blur.Michael Brodie born 1985 is the author of A Period of Juvenile Prosperity 2013 and Tones of Dirt and Bone 2015. He lives with his girlfriend in Biloxi Mississippi where the railroad is never far just hidden in the trees from view. Unseen it rattles the windows and floors of their apartment every time a train passes through.