Various materials
Dimensions variable
PostSecret began in 2004 when Frank
Warren left 3,000 postcards in
public places, each asking whoever found
the card to mail him a secret. “Slowly,”
he says, “secrets began to find their
way to my mailbox”; he shared the
anonymous secrets and accompanying
artwork online and in exhibitions and
books. After a few months, Warren
stopped passing out postcards, but the
secrets kept coming, often on homemade
cards. To date he has received close
to half a million secrets, running the
emotional gamut from serious, scary,
and moving to funny and optimistic.
Both ends of the project—sharing a
secret with the world and reading one
from a stranger—have proven cathartic.
Warren feels the project’s popularity
is best summed up by something a
participant wrote: “The things that
make us feel so abnormal are actually
the things that make us all the same.”
