Please note that some photographs may not be suitable for young audiences.

In Mike Brodie’s Failing, there is a photograph of a young woman sound asleep on a pink blanket. Skip ahead in the book and we see her now awake, holding a cigarette on a makeshift bed in the back of a van. A little further up, she’s shooting up through her foot next to a Lisa Frank book, and on the next page there’s just her pregnant stomach under a tank top that says “baby.” Across the vein on her right arm is the letter X, which stands for X marks the spot.

This young woman is Mia Justice Smith, an artist in her own right whose photographs of hitchhiker life exude the romance and ethos of absolute freedom.

In 2021, she hopped her first train and soon after met Mike Brodie. Reflecting on that first ride, Mia wrote in 2022: “I don’t know if I had ever experience a feeling like that, you know? All I knew was that me strung out, was definitely not the move anymore, and I had found a purpose.”

That freedom was tragically cut short. Three years ago, Mia lost her life to an overdose. She was 23 years old.

In honor of Mia and her vision, we collaborated with photographers Bill Daniel and Ian Ritter to print a selection of her work that will be on view through December 12. We’ve additionally compiled a collection of Polaroids, prints and ephemera from across her life.

Last year, LatoPaper published a zine of her work titled Slack, vol. 3. There’s a long, wandering passage by Mia about addiction, faith, and life on the road.

She says: Most people you see on trains, they’re all performing you know? And we all perform, it’s human nature, but like, a performance ends, and that’s why you see all those people talking about they regret their face tattoos, and the need to grow up and get a job now you’re almost 40, it’s like…they say that shit…because they were performing, and that’s cool like, live that phase know what I’m sayin? But this will never end for me, I will probably just look even more crazy in 30 years.

Please consider donating to Shatterproof, an organization actively fighting addiction.

To inquire about prints, please email info@phnyc.com