“My only agenda is to bring attention to otherwise ignored and shunned lives.” -Jim Goldberg
Young people are the future of our societies, and our world. Before they can fully thrive and grow to both replace and exceed the work their ancestors dedicated their lives to, positive, nurturing environments must first be fostered. In order for this to happen, countless laws have been established across the world to protect and support young children, but, try as they might, plenty still fall through the cracks and are left to fend for themselves. As a result of this, general ideologies and attitudes toward young people shift among older generations, garnering them a negative reputation that can sometimes stop them from looking for the help that they need, and only worsening the problem. Photographers such as Jim Goldberg and Mike Brodie challenge this representation, providing them with a platform to where they can tell their own stories and be represented more fairly, and so that they can be understood. In this essay, I will discuss how both these artists portray young people, and how I find myself relating to it from my own experiences.
Jim Goldberg’s 1995 photobook, “Raised by Wolves”, is a compilation of various mixed media, including handwritten notes, transcripts of conversations, drawings, and photographs composed over the course of a decade. Through these different mediums, Goldberg builds a collage of fragments of his subject’s lives and experiences, revealing their dreams, behaviours and struggles piece by piece. A particular narrative focus of the book is the relationship between “Tweeky Dave” and “Echo”, two runaways living on the streets of California, which Goldberg intimately captures through each page. Despite this, Goldberg himself considers the project a “work of narrative fiction” as opposed to photojournalism, as he often had found that some of the people he’d met had lied about their backgrounds or lives in some way or another, dubbing them more as “half-truths”. He portrays the unforgiving reality of mental health and drug abuse in these characters lives, a global issue that is still growing today even in the UK, with a reported approximately 3.1 million people using some form of banned substance in the last twelve months (March 2023), and roughly 1.1 million people using class A drugs.
In the above image, a page taken from Goldberg’s photobook, two images of a young man’s teeth and his stomach with his shirt lifted up are shown, with some handwritten text in the negative space. The man’s teeth look to be jagged and in poor health, his stomach bears a large scar rising from below his jeans to his lower chest, and his clothing resembles that of the punk subculture, from the denim jacket, the jeans, the effigy of a middle finger attached to his belt loop, and what little can be seen of his t-shirt, that seems to represent a band. The writing can be assumed to belong to the man depicted in the imagery, stating, “I’m Dave who the fuck are you” and “You need me 2 feel superior I need you 2 laugh at”. Immediately from these given context clues, it’s understood that Dave has grown up in poor circumstances that seem to have left him both physically and mentally scarred, suggested by his cynical attitude in the provided text and the accompanying imagery. In the photographs themselves, the composition is entirely focused on the man. In the image of his teeth, Dave can be seen grinning, whilst the background is completely unfocused and unintelligible. His lips have black marks on them, potentially from a habit of picking them or as a result of a fight on the streets. His skin appears dry and flaky, which could result from both poor skin care and sun overexposure, and his teeth are chipped and seem to be decaying heavily. Dave’s mouth is centred in the composition, taken from a 45-degree angle, creating more shadows and adding depth to his features. In the second image, he stands with his hands on his hips, suggesting his confidence as a person despite his struggles, proudly displaying his scar almost like a badge of honour. This displays the brutal abuse and neglect Dave has faced over the course of his life, but also suggests that he takes pride in his ability to survive these horrors. His excessive use of personal language – such as “I’m” “me” “I” – in his handwriting featured on the page hints to his feeling alone in his survival, feeling ostracised and isolated by others for one reason or another; despite knowing and being around others in similar situations.
“I wasn’t satisfied with just being this young punk kid roaming aimlessly taking pretty pictures.” – Mike Brodie
Mike Brodie’s 2013 photobook, “A Period of Juvenile Prosperity”, follows his own raw experience of train-hopping across the United States in his youth, meeting other runaways that had a similar burning desire to find themselves and be free. Brodie’s execution of this focuses almost entirely on brief moments of intense emotion and intimacy that are entirely up to the viewer’s own interpretation. The rawness that emanates from his imagery derives from his then-inexperienced eye for photography; Brodie had no concern for composition, just a need to capture his experiences as they were, a factor often missing from professional photography.
Brodie captures a first-hand desire for freedom that presents itself unmatched to other photographers; his experience was his life, not just a small part of it that he could leave behind – his representation of youth was also a representation of himself. Brodie states himself in his photobook that he was a victim of neglect and childhood abuse, which is what aligns him with these people who themselves feel outcasted. In the above photograph, Brodie presents an intimate scene of two young people sleeping together on a pile of cardboard, inside sleeping bags. The right-hand side of the composition behaves as the focal point, where the two people lie in the sleeping bags and a pile of clothes, whilst the left-hand side shows loose electrical wires, some sort of electrical appliance, a pair of shoes and various other junk, and a dirty floor peering from the cardboard. The people depicted bear resemblance to cosmetic features from the punk subculture, particularly through their short hairstyles and jewellery. The composition leaves a large central portion of the image as negative space where the cardboard sits, bringing attention to the outer thirds of the image, which then brings a viewer’s eyes toward the right-hand side where the people lie through the more diverse colour palette as opposed to the left side. Overall, the image holds a moving sense of humanity as it displays a tender moment between two people that society often look over and ignore, whether it’s a beggar on the street or a younger person acting out as a result of poor living conditions, which is something that I feel could be the cause for the level of attention that was brought to Brodie’s photobook when it was first published.
Whilst the two photographers represent these ignored youths similarly, their methods of doing so differ. Goldberg takes more of a perspective of an ‘outsider’, despite being involved with some of his subjects’ lives – it’s a world he hasn’t personally been part of, although he’s witnessed and become intertwined with it, ‘Raised by Wolves’ doesn’t capture the essence of being a runaway in the same way, being an ‘insider’ that Brodie does through his close behavioural relation to the people he photographs. From my own experience, I find myself more associated with the attitude of transience presented in ‘A Period of Juvenile Prosperity’, simply because its more representative of how I saw the world at the time and how my situation was; it felt more as though I was looking for something somewhere. Goldberg’s use of an established narrative works to create deep connections between his audience and his subjects using different forms of media, whereas Brodie’s approach of an open-ended catalogue of memories leaves it to a viewer to develop both their own story and connection to each image, whilst truly showing the humanity behind most of his subjects.
In conclusion, both photographers establish a sense of empathy between the audience and the troubled youths that they photograph, and both attempt to reveal the humanity behind the people that are often shunned and outcasted for their poor circumstances and inability to properly respond in ways that others can easily interpret and understand.
Bibliography
Goldberg, J. (2016), Raised by Wolves. Zurich: Scalo
Brodie, M. (2013), A Period of Juvenile Prosperity. Santa Fe: Twin Palms Publishers
A Completely True Work of Fiction: Jim Goldberg’s Raised by Wolves – Magnum Photos, May 5 2018 – https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/jim-goldberg-raised-by-wolves/ [Accessed 20/01/2024]
Drug Misuse in England and Wales: Year Ending March 2023 – Office for National Statistics, December 14 2023 – https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/articles/drugmisuseinenglandandwales/yearendingmarch2023#:~:text=In%20the%20year%20ending%20March,(around%201.1%20million%20people). [Accessed 18/01/2024]
‘I am the witness and the subject’: Magnum Photographer Jim Goldberg on telling his own story – Sean O’Hagan, The Guardian, October 1 2023 – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/oct/01/jim-goldberg-magnum-photographer-coming-and-going-book-raised-by-wolves-interview [Accessed 11/01/2024]
Interview with Mike Brodie – Katherine Oktober Matthews, oktoberNIGHT, February 28 2015 – https://oktobernight.com/2015/02/interview-mike-brodie/ [Accessed 11/01/2024]
Mike Brodie’s “A Period of Juvenile Prosperity” – Jessie Wender, The New Yorker, January 28 2013 – https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/mike-brodies-a-period-of-juvenile-prosperity#:~:text=His%20images—of%20trains%20with,TBW%20Books%2C%20on%20March%201st. [Accessed 20/01/2024]
Raised by Wolves: A Conversation with Jim Goldberg – Fellowship, January 7 2023 – https://fellowship.xyz/journal/raised-by-wolves-a-conversation-with-jim-goldberg/ [Accessed 11/01/2024]
Q&A with Mike Brodie – Blake Andrews, BlogSpot, October 26 2023 – https://blakeandrews.blogspot.com/2023/10/q-with-mike-brodie.html [Accessed 16/01/2024]
Statutory Homelessness in England: April to June 2023 – Gov UK, November 30 2023 – https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statutory-homelessness-in-england-april-to-june-2023 [Accessed 18/01/2024]