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The Secret Lives of Strangers

Frank Warren’s PostSecret Offers a Close-Up Look at the Art of Confession

By Sara Grace McCandless
Published: February 6th, 2006 | 6:16pm

There are some secrets that never make their way onto the pages of a diary or in the space between the parishioner and priest. Perhaps that’s because these scenarios fail to provide a true sense of relief — ultimately, you’re only confessing to yourself, or trying to disguise your voice to the clergy member in order to evade judgment.

Fortunately, Frank Warren believes in the power of confession, and for those with a burden they’d like to unload, he developed an anonymous way for any person to do so. The result can now be explored in his book, PostSecret: Extrodinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives, which provides a snapshot of the thousands of postcards he has received over the past few years.

A husband, father, and local business owner in Germantown, Maryland, just outside of the Capitol Beltway, the first ideas for the PostSecret project came to Warren at a time when he was looking for more purpose and meaning in his own life. “I had a vision for trying make real some of the interior lives I believe all of us have.” With the intent of finding a way to share people’s secrets in a non-judgmental arena, Warren began by printing up 3,000 self-addressed post cards. The instructions were brief and simple:

“You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything – as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before. Be brief. Be legible. Be creative.”

<img alt="postsecret2.jpg" src="http://venuszine.com/stories/postsecret2.jpg" width="300" height="201" align="left" hspace="5" />Warren scattered the first batches of postcards around the city, leaving them in bus stops or sticking them in between the pages of library books. The original postcards were made of plain white stock with black type but once he started receiving submissions, the cards began to evolve into an artistic expression of the confession as well.

Warren selected a series of cards for a small local exhibit, but once that closed, he moved the project into an online arena and created the <a href="http://postsecret.blogspot.com/">PostSecret</a> blog. Word-of-mouth across the Internet quickly brought on a torrential downpour of fresh submissions, not just locally, but from all over the country (new postcards are featured every Sunday on the blog). It also brought the attention of over a dozen publishers and editors, ultimately leading to a book deal with HarperCollins/Regan Books. PostSecret has even spread beyond the publishing world, with plans for a regular installment on Judith Regan’s radio show and talks of a documentary series for television. The PostSecret blog was also recently nominated for five <a href="http://2006.bloggies.com/">Bloggie awards</a> (the Oscars of the online world). Winners will be revealed on March 13 at the upcoming SXSW Festival in Austin, though Warren considers himself “the Charlie Chaplin” of the blogosphere.

Despite the fever pitch at which PostSecret has grown, Warren is quick to point out that PostSecret isn’t so much his as it belongs to everyone who has contributed — and he remains remarkably grateful for their participation. “This project found me,” he declares, and he may be right — the project continues to find him, with over 500 new postcards received weekly. He cites his process for selecting which secrets to share as, “intuitive.”

<img alt="postsecret3.jpg" src="http://venuszine.com/stories/postsecret3.jpg" width="300" height="194" align="right" hspace="5" />“I try to select a wide variety of secrets – funny, sexual, artistic, hopeful – and then try to arrange in a way that tells a cohesive story,” he says. “I consider both the content of the secret and the composition of the card when choosing what secret to feature – if it’s just words, that doesn’t disqualify.” Warren maintains that while the volume of submissions has grown, the content of the confessions has not shifted much since the onset of the project. Secrets continue to range from the funny (“I paid an ‘F’ student $50 to write my valedictorian speech. And it was way better than mine could ever have been”) to the sexual (“I think about girls when I am having sex with my husband”) to the hopeful (“I’m falling for you…please don’t mess it up”).

Sometimes, the confessions come to Warren in methods that transcend pen and paper. “I once received a huge lock of hair,” he explains, “as though someone had cut it all off in one large piece with a note that said, ‘My parents love their hair salon more than me.’”

Warren has also turned the attention for PostSecret into an investment of goodwill. In lieu of payment for allowing the All-American Rejects to feature the postcards in their “Dirty Little Secret” video, Warren asked that the money be donated to the Kristin Brooks Hope Center, which is affiliated with 1-800-Suicide, a 24-hour crisis hotline. A recent month-long exhibit in Georgetown (sponsored by the Washington Program for the Arts/Corcoran Museum) also featured a special fundraiser and silent auction for the Center to further raise awareness.

<img alt="postsecret4.jpg" src="http://venuszine.com/stories/postsecret4.jpg" width="300" height="224" hspace="5" align="left" />The exhibit in Washington, D.C. marked the largest display of the project to date, and the response was overwhelming. Within the nation’s capitol, it’s no secret that Washingtonians love their football team. But as the Redskins battled to maintain a position in the NFL playoffs on the first weekend in January, a stream of locals had anything but first downs on their mind as they waited in an hour and a half line on M Street in Georgetown just to get a glimpse during the last days of the PostSecret exhibit. Named as one of the top five art shows of 2005 by The Washington Post, the exhibit drew over 15,000 eyeballs to the display of postcards featured in the book, with Warren appearing several times throughout the course of the show to meet his legion of fans — and sometimes, the confessors themselves.

So what’s it like putting a face to the words and art once received so anonymously? “It’s great to hear the stories*hÞ,¶º.@êG�GH8��N_lf6ix~k
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While there are currently no firm plans for another volume of PostSecret, Warren remains open to the possibility and in the meantime, fully intends to continue sharing the anonymous secrets of the strangers that pass us by every day on the street. “I’m not imposing a lot,” he says. “I will follow wherever the project leads.”