Found Magazine is based on things people find: scraps of grocery lists, doodles on napkins, polaroids found in the gutter. Often the glimpse of someone's life that these things provide is intensely intimate and secret. There's a sense of being found out.
PostSecret, on the other hand, is an ongoing "community art project" that is fueled by people who send in their secrets on homemade postcards. The power of these postcards is that the confession is offered, that courage is behind telling the secret for the first time.
A critic of PostSecret, Evan Imber-Black, says that secret-telling only has meaning in the context of family relationships. I wonder about that. Maybe revealing something anonymously begins to break the power of the secret and makes it possible to tell other people. Maybe the value is in the rest of us feeling like we're not alone as we read. Or maybe the value is in how reading these secrets changes the way I look at the people who are in my life and in my path... maybe with a little more gentleness and patience.
2 comments:
Mel, these are very interesting websites. Something about the sites remind me of the Griffin and Sabine books we read... feeling like I see a part of someone else's life that is normally hidden, or seeing someone "unmasked". There's a sense of intimacy in them that I appreciate. Thanks!
Hey, Dave, thanks for stopping by. We've been enjoying your family's blog site.
You're right - sometimes these things are so revealing that they just leave me gasping. PostSecret is updated every Sunday... last week there was a postcard with a necklace on it that read "I have a necklace I bought at the place where I cheated on my husband. Iwear it whenever he tells me I'm fat, stupid, and ugly to remind myself someone once thought I was beautiful." Break my heart.
I'm glad he throws a few of the secrets that are a little more quirky (like the one about handmade cards).
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