I've Got a Secret...

...but I'm not gonna tell you what it is.

That makes me different from the thousands of folks who've participated in the PostSecret project, which I and others (like Guest Editor Dan) have blogged about.

Now, before I give you the hyperlink, I'll give you a content warning and note that PostSecret's content includes some adult themes and situations, including but not limited to sex, crime, and bodily functions -- after all, these are people's deep and/or dark secrets that they're revealing anonymously. Take, for example, this shocking confession:

So, as many of you know, PostSecret is the creation of Frank Warren, an artist based in Germantown, Maryland.

From his description, "PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard."

PostSecret got its start from an installation at Artomatic, a DC-area arts event, where Frank set up stacks of postcards available for visitors to fill out with a secret. And they did. Boy, did they.

From there, PostSecret has grown into a blog phenomena; Frank says he gets upwards of 350 postcards a week, from all over the world; he publishes a new batch to his blog every Sunday; he's got a new PostSecret book out, and he's working on installations all over the country.

This includes a run that just ended this past Sunday, at the Washington Project for the Arts\Corcoran gallery space in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

I went Sunday night (the last night of the exhibition, of course), and took the admittedly bad snapshots you'll see here in the blog and gallery. (You can see better pics from the exhibition's opening.)

Now, I was interested in seeing the postcards, especially in the context of a museum or gallery, but I was particularly interested in seeing how people interacted with the cards.

Being the last night of the exhibition, plus being after 9pm on a Sunday night in Georgetown (which is known for its bars, clubs and other social spaces), I wasn't sure if it would be crowded or not.

It was pretty crowded:

I got in line to wait, but after about 10 minutes of not moving, I decided to roam around and look.

The gallery space used to be a Staples store. They had big blowups of some of the cards on the walls, but they also had printouts of e-mails Frank had received. A lot of people have been found comfort from the site, since they see that a lot of people have secrets similar to their own. Plus, the confessional nature of things seems to really resonate.

There was also a hanging installation of cards, which I kept coming back to, since it was pretty neat:

One of my favorite parts of the exhibition was a couple of tables set up with boxes of cards that you could look through. It was very high-touch -- you could turn over the cards and look at the postmarks, plus you knew that you were handling something that had been touched by the author:

Going through the cards, both on the table, and in the rest of the exhibition, there were all sorts of cards and observations. Some were poignant, some mundane, some downright scary. A lot of them were really funny, some were quite twisted, and others spoke of despair.

I also got the sense that some people were showing off (albeit anonymously), either with their secret or their card, many of which were really elaborate.

Anyway, you can see some of the cards I snapped in the photo widget, though I did want to call out this one:

It confirms all of our suspicions.

Now, I got there a little after 9pm; the gallery closed officially at 10pm, but if they hadn't made the announcement about 10:30pm, "We're turning out the lights in 10 minutes," there'd probably still be people there.

On the way out, I passed a mailbox made out of transparent tape:

It's a sculpture done by another local artist, Mark Jenkins (you can see his blog entry about it).

Now, as I was leaving, I did get a chance to meet and talk to Frank Warren, which was cool. Of course, did I take a picture of him? No. And did I take a picture of me and him? No. So I fail at self-promotion in that particular case.

Anyway, check out the photos I took, then check out Frank's site at PostSecret.com if you're interested. Thanks -- Joe

Tag: PostSecret