Ferris Bueller: Catharsis

In 2017 Rodney ôFerris Buellerö Bailey documented the contents of his old room in his parentsÆ house in Queens, NY ù full of ephemera collected while growing up in the late eighties and nineties, and largely untouched since. The result of this cathartic process of sorting and recording is this book: part visual autobiography, part time capsule. ôMy bedroom à was my sanctuary because it contained all the things that defined me,ö recalls Bueller, and his mementos include magazines, posters, photos, collages, T-shirts, concert tickets, a Walkman. His extensive collection of sneakers dominates the book, triggers vivid personal memories (expressed in texts throughout the image sequence), and makes palpable a past where the X-Files, Nirvana and Anna Nicole Smith were still current news. Catharsis is both a chronicle of BuellerÆs sometimes difficult youth and a ôrecord of life before the Internet or social media, before everyone knew what everyone else was doing all the time. [à] The only things that would connect y