DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (MIA Galleries 2A): PostSecret: The Power of a Postcard:
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Description of Pictures: PostSecret: The Power of a Postcard
August 3, 2015 – September 2016
Level 1: Mail in America Galleries
The exhibition communicates a contemporary narrative of mail and the postal service, highlighting the aesthetics of the communication tool itself and the juxtaposition between anonymity and shared experiences. It also demonstrates a unique relationship between mail, digital technology and social media. More than 500 artfully decorated postcards mailed anonymously from around the world reveal regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession, childhood humiliation, and other compelling confessions. From sexual taboos and criminal activity to confessions of hidden acts of kindness and shocking habits and fears, the display shares deep secrets by individuals seeking a safe and anonymous space to share untold stories. A pyramid of more than one quarter million stacked cards represents the magnitude and popularity of sharing secrets via postcards.
Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
SIPMPS_150804_019.JPG: He hides his drinking from everyone but me
SIPMPS_150804_049.JPG: I go into drugstores and poke tiny holes through condom packages
SIPMPS_150804_080.JPG: Dad -- I understand why you killed yourself.
SIPMPS_150804_082.JPG: and it makes me not want to be a father
SIPMPS_150804_084.JPG: cause, deep down I know I'm just like you!
SIPMPS_150804_090.JPG: I was so afraid my husband would find out I cheated on him with you. When I went to your funeral I should have felt sad but I was secretly relieved that you took our secret to the grave.
SIPMPS_150804_093.JPG: I spread rumours about my gay classmate to see how people would react if they ever found out about me.
SIPMPS_150804_102.JPG: After I picked up my daughter's ashes from the funeral home, I ate some of them.
SIPMPS_150804_120.JPG: When my parents found out that the woman I was dating was African American, they told me to not return until I got rid of my "Negro Bride."
Her family has been so kind and wonderful to me that, when we marry this fall, I am taking her last name.
SIPMPS_150804_140.JPG: I've been having cyber sex with dad.
He doesn't know it's me.
SIPMPS_150804_222.JPG: Every time there is a school shooting,
I hope that my high school peers remember how they treated me.
SIPMPS_150804_232.JPG: Pyramid of Postcards:
Founded in 2004 by Frank Warren, PostSecret has generated hundreds of thousands of postcards and nearly a billion online blog views. The postcards here are only a small percentage of the total.
SIPMPS_150804_255.JPG: The medication is not enough to make me forget what he did to me... if I see him again I will kill him to save the others.
SIPMPS_150804_289.JPG: I still haven't told me father that I have the same disease that killed my mother.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
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2015 photos: Equipment this year: I mostly used my Fuji XS-1 camera but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
I retired from the US Census Bureau in god-forsaken Suitland, Maryland on my 58th birthday in May. Yee ha!
Trips this year:
a quick trip to Florida.
two Civil War Trust conferences (Raleigh, NC and Richmond, VA), and
my 10th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including Los Angeles).
Ego Strokes: Carolyn Cerbin used a Kevin Costner photo in her USA Today article. Miss DC pictures were used a few times in the Washington Post.
Number of photos taken this year: just over 550,000.
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