Post Secret

My friend sent me an e-mail a few months back, I hadn’t heard from her in months and was pleased she’d got in touch. We’d spent the previous two years in college together discussing the finer points of anything and everything and we always seemed to have a similar sense of artistic thought patterns, always trying new things, attempting to find and push boundaries.

So anyway, back to the e-mail entitled “look look look!” she told me about a website: www.postsecret.com, which her tutor had told her about that day. She sent me the link because, in her own words, she “needed to tell someone who would fully appreciate such an ace idea...check it out brussell sprout”. And so I did, and I’m really glad I did... The concept behind the website is amazing. It all began with an idea by Frank Warren for a community art project back in November 2004. He handed out blank fronted postcards to strangers and left them in public places asking people to write down a secret they had never told anyone and mail it to the address on the reverse, all this was to be done anonymously.

The post cards soon came streaming in, each individually crafted, revealing the senders deepest secrets, fears, desires, obsessions, a view into the soul of human nature. The cards themselves stood alone as works of art and were displayed in exhibitions around the country. After a time Frank stopped putting blank postcards out but still they came thick and fast through the post with post stamps from all over the world, homemade, intimate secrets held on a piece of card no bigger than 6 x 5 inches.

After visiting the site, which is simply a blog that is updated weekly, I was inclined to see the book. The only problem was that it wasn’t on sale in the UK and so I had to buy it through the American Amazon site where I ended up paying almost as much for postage as I did for the books itself. The price we pay for art... anyway I am really glad I did, it arrived at my flat a few weeks later in the morning around 11am and by 2pm I had read it all, cried, cringed and laughed my way through its 276 pages. I was amazed at peoples ability to open themselves up when the chance arrived in which they could spill their deepest secrets safe with the knowledge that no one would ever know who had sent in the card. I suppose this concept already exists in the world as a helping agent to people with charities such as The Samaritans. The whole concept of PostSecret is in fact strongly linked with an American charity called Hope which is advertised on the site offering help similar to that of The Samaritans but focusing strongly on helping the suicidal. PostSecret is, in a way, a form of counselling allowing people to externalise things they may have held inside for years, lightening their burdens and their souls.

One of the post cards contained in the book tells of how a woman decided to write down six secrets she was never able to tell the one person she told everything to - her partner. On a spur of the moment feeling she didn’t post the cards but instead placed them on her pillow in their bed next to her partners head and left for work, a few hours later he turned up at her work and proposed to her... human nature at its best.

One thing I keep wondering about is how much more interesting the postman’s job would have been when given the route that had the address that the cards went to. I wonder what the postmen must think when they read some of the postcards that were sent...



the website is updated every week on either Sunday or Monday with new postcards and updating information about exhibitions and events

The book can be bought from here (beware P&P)

The book is amazing, in fact no... the book is a book, it is pages and images and writing. It is the concept behind it, the nature of humans... it never fails to amaze me...