With a kind smile, he stops you on the sidewalk, hands you a blank postcard and says, “Hi, I’m Frank, and I collect secrets.”
This pitch, given by Frank Warren, is certainly not typical. Then again, Post Secret is not the typical blog of personal rants and essays.
Every Sunday, Warren scans and posts online a selection of anonymous postcards that he receives at his home in Germantown, Md. Each postcard contains a contributor’s secret. The website simply shows one postcard after the other, against a black background and with minimal commentary from Warren. With each weekly update, he adds approximately 10 to 25 cards.
The postcards come from strangers across the country, even overseas. Warren says that when choosing and arranging the postcards he seeks a “composition that shows their vast variety,” because the subject matter ranges from funny to philosophical to “filled with painful detail.”
The man behind the blog—tall and thin in his white baseball cap, windbreaker, tapered jeans and white sneakers—appears calm and humble. At 41 years old, he is married and has one daughter, Hailey. An obviously engaged listener, he responds thoughtfully, asks questions and even offers compliments.
Warren, who received a degree in Social Science from the University of California at Berkeley, has no professional art or psychology training. Explaining how what he calls an “art project” began for a man who operates a document delivery service, Warren warmly chuckles, “Sometimes I feel like this project found me.”
His lack of formal training may actually benefit the art, lending a raw, very real feeling to the forum. Melissa Hernandez (SFS ‘08), who checks for the updates every Sunday, says that Post Secret is “simple and yet it makes a profound statement.”
Warren explained that he is very specific when choosing postcards, because their limited size encourages careful choices. He likens these postcards to “haikus” and “prayers.”
Leaning forward, with earnest eyes under his logo-less cap, Warren described the “cathartic value of tragedy and the therapeutic value of sharing secrets that are difficult to express and make sense of,” making reference to Plato. Warren himself once sent Post Secret a postcard, about a humiliating childhood experience that happened over three decades ago. His reaction? “Relief.”
Hernandez, who says she has considered making a submission, explained, “Each secret holds something that everyone can relate to…The one postcard that I still remember had a picture of an ultrasound with the words ‘I know she’s not mine,’ and on the back it said ‘I still love her.’ It was the emotions that this one card provoked that made me really become attached to this site.”
Warren’s mailbox has become so filled that the web site has made way for a book, Post Secret: Extraordinary Confessions from Ordinary Lives (HarperCollins, $24.95). Additionally, in cooperation with the Washington Program for the Arts/Corcoran, Warren will exhibit postcards at the former Staples store on M St. starting Dec. 15. The revamped shop-cum-venue will host several of WPAC’s upcoming exhibits. The book is Warren’s first, and while the exhibit will be his second, it is by far his largest.
When asked to compare his conception of each project, Warren is thoughtful. The web site, he explains, shows that these are “living secrets that exist in real time.” It gives the secrets “a sense of urgency and immediacy.” He values the blog because it “reaches so many people with an airtight, nonjudgmental environment.” Warren wants the book to provide the continuity that he worries might be missing from the website, since he does not archive posts.
With the exhibit in December, Warren hopes to bring people together, a unique feat for artwork that is predicated on anonymity and secrecy.
“Over 2,000 postcards will be placed in collector’s sleeves and strung on lines, allowing visitors to see the front and back of each card,” he said. Warren emphasizes that this set-up will position people face-to-face, so that as one person is looking at one side of a postcard, there will be someone on the opposite side.
On Dec. 14, the eve of the exhibit’s opening night, Warren will host a fundraiser for the Kristin Brooks Hope Center of the National Hopeline Network (1-800-SUICIDE) at the gallery. While Warren, who has volunteered for two suicide prevention hotlines, does not see an immediate link between Post Secret and suicide, Hernandez does. Having lost a cousin to suicide, and she thinks that the Post Secrect web site functions as a fourm for people to cope with their problems, rather than take their own lives.
In providing such a forum, Post Secret appeals to a wide audience. Warren has been approached by the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) as well as MTV2, and now he will strike up a conversation about Post Secret with just about anyone.
As he strolled along Georgetown’s leafy campus in mid-November, he approached a young woman with a buzz cut, an older man in a tweed coat, a middle-aged woman in patent leather boots and several college-age females.
The most skeptical person was the older man, who seemed confused and then muttered his lack of interest. Several people hesitated but then said “cool” or “awesome” when Warren displayed an album of sample postcards to help them understand the project.
One person approached reacted with an “Ohh, you’re from Post Secret?” but then explained that she has not submitted anything because she is “not creative.” When Warren beseechingly tried to dissuade her of that idea, she responded that she “doesn’t have any good secrets.” Warren reassured her that such people “usually have the best ones” and leaves her with the postcard. Did she send it in? That’s a secret.
The Post Secret website is www.postsecret.com. The former Staples store is located at 3307 M Street, N.W., and the fundraiser will be from 6 to 10 p.m. on Wed, Dec 14. There is a $10 suggested donation, and it is open to the public. The opening reception will be Thurs., Dec. 15, from 6-10 p.m. The exhibit is free and will run until January 8, 2006. Gallery hours are Wed, Thurs and Fri 6-10 p.m. and Sat and Sun 2-10 p.m.
