Leica Lounge · October 20, 2022

The Making of The Precipice

Tony Chirinos presented The Making of The Precipice, the story of his most recent book. The book addresses how an artist has a biased eye. The eye that created these images as a project was the heart’s eye, and by its naiveté, it unwillingly structured an underlining theme of death and the vulnerability of life. In his work, that fleeting visual moment of death and vulnerability is the quiet context and the constant in all of his images. It’s the slow and steady pulse as much a part of living as that first heartbeat of new creation.

Says Chirinos, "The purpose of my work is to create a visual narrative for a story that examines rather than shies away from how precious life is. So much of death’s story remains untold, unseen, unwitnessed or experienced. My deep desire is to share, just a little, of death’s enigmas."

The Washington Post calls The Precipice, "A potent meditation on life and death". The Precipice is the summation of nearly two decades spent working as a biomedical photographer in Miami. Chirinos threads the needle between the sometimes delicate, often brutal world of surgical intervention. The book is separated into three main bodies: surgical photographs of living subjects; vibrant typologies of exquisitely photographed tools; and the journey to the afterlife. The Precipice draws back the curtain to a world which most of us never see, where human fragility and resilience coexist in an uneasy equilibrium.

Featuring essays by Michelle Otero and Eugenie Shinkle, and a poem by Claudia Isidron, The Precipice is simultaneously lyrical and bleak, a celebration of life and an unflinching observation of what follows.

The book is available in a trade edition, in a Swiss-bound hardcover, and a more affordable "student edition", without a cover and enclosed in a printed manila envelope. There is also a poster, at 650x920mm, featuring Chirinos's photographs of surgical implements.

Libro: The Precipice