Post Secret – Voyeurism for the soul

By Averad on January 28th, 2008

The cover of PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives caughty my attention, with its Olympia Wa post stamp and paper bag exterior. I walked over and picked up the book and the moment I opened the cover I knew I had to have it.

The picture below hints at just some of the serious and sometimes silly secrets people have shared.

PostSecret began as an art installation for Artomatic 2004 in Washington, D.C by Frank Warren.The simple concept of the project was that completely anonymous people decorate a postcard and portray a secret that they had never previously revealed.

No restrictions were (or are) made on the content of the secret; only that it must be completely truthful and must never have been spoken before.

Since Frank Warren created the website on January 1, 2005, PostSecret has collected and displayed upwards of 2,500 original pieces of art from people across the United States and around the world as well as published in 4 books (see links below).

The site, which started as an experimental Blogspot and is updated every Sunday with approximately 20 new pieces, has a relatively constant style, giving all “artists” who participate some guidelines on how their secrets should be represented.

TIME.com listed the Postsecret blog as one of the “50 Coolest Websites of 2005″, “A fascinating public airing of private thoughts. . . The range of efforts (meticulous, sloppy, artful, ponderous) will astound you.”

I believe each of us can learn something about others as well as our selves by reading one of the Post Secret books or visiting the blog.