IFLATFILEphotography presents ALTERED SCENARIOS. The show, which will feature the photographs of Robin Hann, Mark DeBernardi and Richard Koenig, with a special project room installation by Jason Scott Gessner.

The exhibitís title, ALTERED SCENARIOS, refers to the fact that each of the showís artists have altered either the actual photographs, or the viewer's perception of the images contained within their borders. Robin Hann, from Chicago, whose work has previously been seen in several exhibits at FLATFILE, has turned to large format color images for the continuation of her "twins" series. The clean, minimal, background-free compositions are about the figures they portray and very little else, yet are emotionally loaded and psychologically charged. Interestingly, Hann really is a twin, but chooses, in her art, to portray both of the twins herself, using digital manipulation as a tool to merge her two selves in each single, striking image.

Chicagoan Mark DeBernardi, on the other hand, alters the photographs after they are created, using a variety of materials and processes to coat and distress the actual gelatin silver photographs post-darkroom. Debernardi, also a longtime FLATFILE artist, will show the largest body of new work ever, with the images ranging from altered photographs to some collage, to collage in which one plays a sort of "where's Waldo" to find the single small area that is actually created via photography. Viewers who are familiar with DeBernardi's 2002 images of Nuclear Power Plants in the Chicago Reader, his eerily calm Walden Pond, or his delicate photo-based collages, will be delighted to see the incredible variety in Debernardiís newest work.

A guest to FLATFILE, Richard Koenig, from Kalamazoo, Michigan, deals with actual space and perceptions altered by the application of photographs. The images are distorted to seem correct when seen from a single viewpoint. A smooth facade is implied where perspective and depth are thwarted, making for an odd visual conundrum. Once the viewer has one piece lined up, the other images look wrong from the same viewing location. Koenig also has a solo show, Ambivalent Views, opening in June, 2003 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, in conjunction with the Midwest Photographers Project.

In the project room, FLATFILE digital and video artist Jason Scott Gessner, will premiere his video installation entitled ORD09112001. Certainly nothing in the recent past has altered the scenario of American life with such force as the attacks on the World Trade Center. By recording what was not on that day, rather than what was, Gessner has created a statement far more powerful than all the thousands of hours of footage of flames and bedlam. The curious, pastoral silence of Gessner's piece is a poignant reminder of a time before skyscrapers, airplanes and terrorists, and a fitting and beautiful memorial to those whom we have lost.