In January 2000, when Susan Aurinko resolved to open a gallery, she expected to spend the next year preparing a business plan and lining up artists. But when the right West Loop space presented itself a month later she grabbed it and hit the ground running, hosting Flatfile Photography Gallery’s first opening that April. “I had no idea about what I was doing,” she says. “I only knew I wanted to show emerging artists and students, and I wanted to have lots of flat files . . . so anyone who walked in the gallery could go on a treasure hunt for art that moves them or touches a nerve.”
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The established Chicago galleries devoted to photography can be counted on one hand, even if that hand is missing a digit or two: Stephen Daiter, Catherine Edelman, Schneider. As a result Aurinko–herself a fine-art photographer, as well as a collector and charity auction organizer–didn’t have to look hard to find people who wanted her to show their work. Before Flatfile opened, she posted two calls for submissions: one at Columbia College, where she had taken art courses, and one at Lab One, where fellow photographer Mark DeBernardi had been printing her photographs since overexposure to darkroom chemicals in the late 90s damaged the nerves in her hands. (DeBernardi, who is my husband, now shows work at Flatfile.)
Nonetheless, the gallery is changing. This past May Flatfile moved from its original 1,200-square-foot digs at 119 N. Peoria to a space almost twice as large in the building across the street, also home to such better-known galleries as Walsh, Aron Packer, and Rhona Hoffman. In the past the gallery has exclusively hosted group exhibits, but with the extra room Aurinko will be able to mount installations, group shows, and one- and two-person shows concurrently.
