Those 80s Rooms

Every 80s bedroom photograph shows you something whole. Star Wars posters on the wall, an Atari or Commodore gathering dust on the desk, rotary phones, Duran Duran and Madonna and The Who taped up on the walls—whatever mattered that week. The specificity of it—which bands, which console, which exact model—tells you something complete about a moment in someone’s life. There was a kind of faith in those rooms, a belief in the permanence of these things.

The 90s came along and spoiled it. Eurodance and Tamagotchis and bizarre techno remixes of things that should’ve stayed normal. It felt like the wrong decade entirely, like someone took a wrong turn in 1989 and dragged everyone along.

But those 80s rooms—looking at the photographs now, there’s something genuinely sad about them. The generation that decorated them is aging out. They’re the ones getting old, getting frail. The kids who taped up those posters are becoming people nobody really looks at anymore. Everything in those rooms is dust except the photographs, and even those won’t last forever.