“#5060,” 2006-2009. © Mike Brodie: from A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, Courtesy M+B Gallery, Los Angeles.

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” ―Jack Kerouac, On the Road

There’s an excitement and allure to hitting the road with no destination in sight and no route in mind. This is part of the appeal of Mike Brodie‘s recent work. Captured during a three-year period when, as a teenager, he hitchhiked, rode freight trains and lived off the grid with a group of fellow travelers, Brodie’s images have a movement and restlessness to them that celebrates the freedom of the itinerant life. This is the modern-day equivalent of Jack Kerouac’s seminal novel On the Road. But just as Kerouac and his Beat Generation peers had their share of despair, Brodie’s photos show that life on the road is not for the faint of heart. His subjects are soot-covered, sleeping on the side of the tracks and surviving on the food others have thrown away. Yet they ride on, ever curious about what the next spot on the map can bring.

“Mike Brodie: A Period of Juvenile Prosperity” opens at M+B gallery in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 16, with a book signing by the artist, whose first monograph, A Period of Juvenile Prosperity, was published earlier this month by Twin Palms. A concurrent exhibition is also running in New York City at Yossi Milo Gallery.

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“Desert Fire #249,” 1985. © Richard Misrach

The Robert Mann Gallery in New York City recently moved to a new location and to inaugurate the space, they are hanging a retrospective of Richard Misrach’s landscape and fine-art photography. The exhibition spans the first 25 years of the photographer’s career and includes his seminal work “The Desert Cantos.” According to the gallery, “Richard Misrach: The Desert Cantos” traces the artistic development of the photographer and starts “with the luscious split-toned works realized with a flash shot into desert night scenes. Eerie and magnificent, these works introduce many of the themes that would occupy Misrach in the years to come: staging the condition of aesthetic beauty of the natural world as mediated by human intervention in the landscape — in this case the photographer’s own invasive flash.” The exhibition runs through October 27, 2012.

All images courtesy of the Artist, Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles; Pace/MacGill, New York.

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“Coney Island, N.Y., USA, June 20, 1993.” Chromogenic print, 117 x 94 cm. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris. © Rineke Dijkstra

Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective opens today at the Guggenheim in New York City. The midcareer survey of the Dutch portraitist’s work was previously on display at SFMOMA. Known for her modern approach to portraiture, many of the subjects in Dijkstra’s large-scale color photos are young adults and teens. The extensive exhibition includes work from many of her series, including “Beach Portraits,” which features portraits of adolescents taken on the beach; “Almerisa,” her long-term project photographing a Bosnian refugee living in the Netherlands; and portraits of women with their newborn babies immediately after giving birth. Also included in the exhibition is her video work. To learn more about Dijkstra and see a slide show of her work, check out our recent profile of her.

 
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“Untitled,” 1960s. © The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard is best known for the eerie, masked portraits in his photo book The Family Album of Lucybelle Crater, which was published after his death in 1972. Beginning on Saturday, May 19, 2012, the Philadelphia Museum of Art will exhibit “Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Dolls and Masks,” which explores Meatyard’s early work from the late-Fifties through the Sixties. In the images, his friends and family members wear masks while posing in rundown houses, forests and cemeteries. Dolls and doll parts also figure prominently in the work. The exhibition runs through August 5, 2012. For more info, visit www.philamuseum.org.

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French photographer and street artist JR. © Zachary Bako

While doing an artist residency in Beijing, photographer Zachary Bako started documenting the contemporary art scene in China. But it wasn’t until he returned home to New York City that he would meet Liu Bolin, who was working on his series “Hiding in New York.” Bako began photographing Liu’s creative process for the images, which show Liu painted to blend into the background of various sites around the city.

Within six months, Bako relocated to Beijing and began his own series “Liu Bolin: The Process.” Using both still images and video, Bako continues to record and document what goes on behind the scenes in order for Liu to make photographs for his “Hiding in the City” series. Here, Bako chronicles a collaboration between Liu and French photographer JR. For the work, JR photographed Liu, enlarged the image, and pasted it on his studio’s exterior wall and door. Then Liu painted JR to blend into the image and photographed the resulting work.

Liu’s exhibit “Lost in Art” is currently on display at Eli Klein Fine Art in New York City through May 11.

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