Postsecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives - Frank Warren

...beginning of 2007) which I look forward immensely to purchasing and reading through.



# PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives (compiled by Frank Warren)
# Hardcover: 278 pages
# Publisher: ReganBooks (Dec 2005)
# Language English
# ISBN: 0060899190  ... more

"There are two kinds of secrets: those we keep from others and those we hide from ourselves"

°*°*° What is PostSecret? °*°*°
It all started in November 2004. Frank Warren, from Maryland, USA, printed out 3000 post cards and began handing them to strangers and leaving them in public places. Each post card told the reader:

"SHARE A SECRET
You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession or a childhood humiliation. Reveal anything - as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before.

Create your 4-by-6-inch postcards out of any mailable material. If you want to share two or more secrets, use multiple postcards. Put your complete secret and image on one side of the postcard.

SEE A SECRET
www.postsecret.com"

Frank claims that after a few weeks he stopped handing out post cards but secrets still kept arriving in his mailbox. Secrets sent from across the globe, each a work of art in it's own right, written in Portuguese, French, German, Hebrew and even Braille. There is one of the website at this moment in Russian. His community art project continued to grow, as more and more people learned about the project and the website. The site is has been listed as the most visited blog site for the past two years.

"Like fingerprints, no two secrets are identical, but every secret has a story behind it" Frank claims. Personally, I like thinking up the stories behind the secret, imagining if it's a man or a woman, young or old, a new secret or something they've been struggling with for a lifetime. It not always about learning things about other people, reading their secret teaches you something about yourself. "We all have secrets: fears, regrets, hopes, beliefs, fantasies, betrayals, humiliations. We may not always recognise them but they are a part of us - like the dreams we can't always recall in the morning light.

As its fame has grown, PostSecret has developed far beyond a small community art project. Frank Warren regularly tours galleries with a selection of the secrets, delivers speeches to various organisations and groups and has several published books. The music group All American Rejects used images from PostSecret in their video Dirty Little Secret.

°*°*° What's in the book? °*°*°
This book is a collection of the PostSecrets sent in between November 2004 and the end of 2005. The secrets range from the smallest thing ('I ate all the blackberries!') to the heartbreaking ('I still haven't told my father I have the same disease that killed my mother.') Some of the secrets are printed four to a page; others are given a two-page spread. No secret seems to affect different readers the same way.

Nicely dispersed throughout the PostSecret images are quotes about secrets. Some come from Frank himself, others from visitors to the website or journalists doing articles.

The website, and the book, help to support a US call line called the 'National Hopeline Network', a 24-hour hotline for those thinking about suicide or who know people who are. Part of the cost of the book goes towards the call line and there are often appeals to help on the website.

°*°*° Is it value for money? °*°*°
Well … yes, and no. If you were to read this book too often, it would lose its impact and effect. The secrets wouldn't seem as poignant and meaningful. But if you were to only flip through its pages once in a while, its effect would be much more lasting. I think a lot of PostSecrets success (number of readers, rather than secrets sent in) is due to the shock factor of the secrets. Sometimes because they are hard to believe (but inevitably you do end up believing without questioning), or because they remind you of yourself. There's a quote somewhere in the book along the lines of 'I never sent in a secret but I saw mine on every page.'

°*°*° Who would it appeal to? °*°*°
PostSecret is predominantly about secrets, so you'd think it only appealed to people who keep secrets. But that is not the case at all. I think PostSecret would appeal to anyone, whether it is for the secrets, or the art, or the stories behind the images - everyone can gain something from reading this book. And you might learn that you do have a secret after all. Not something you've been hiding, just that you've never told anybody.

°*°*° Other Info °*°*°
You can visit the website at: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/ It is updated every Sunday with new images. The book can be purchased from most good book stores, or online. I bought mine from Amazon.co.uk for around £15. There are two more PostSecret books due to be released (at the end of this year and the beginning of 2007) which I look forward immensely to purchasing and reading through.

1. PostSecret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives (compiled by Frank Warren)
2. Hardcover: 278 pages
3. Publisher: ReganBooks (Dec 2005)
4. Language English
5. ISBN: 0060899190 

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