Tony Chirinos • Farewell
2019 • Fiscal Sponsorship
Images from the series Farewell, Surgical Theatre, and The Beauty of the Uncommon Tool © Tony Chirinos
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“In my work, death is the quiet context and the constant, the slow and steady pulse that is as much a part of living as that first heartbeat of a new creation.”
Farewell is Tony Chirinos’ long-term project created during his 15-year career as a hospital photographer. Chirinos was granted access to a hospital operating suite and the morgue and the resulting project includes three distinct, yet interweaving projects, that focus on the performance and procedures of the operating theater, scenes portraying the sterility and quiet of the morgue, the typological examination of the surgical and medical tools.
The two former projects are presented in black-and-white, and the tools in color. All photographs are shot on film. The three projects explore the fragility of the human body and our tenuous connection between life and death.
“In this unique collection of photographs, Tony Chirinos fixates his lens on medicine’s impulse to preserve the physical body. His cool yet luminous photographs reveal a dramatic tension between the clinical gaze and the inevitability of our mortality.”~ Stephen Hilger, Associate Professor of Photography, Pratt Institute
“Tony Chirinos confronts the frailty of human existence and the weight – and inevitable burden – of death. Universal, pulsing, quiet, and mysterious.”~ Jon Feinstein, Co-Founder, Humble Arts Foundation
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• View and learn more about Farewell, Surgical Theatre, and The Beauty of the Uncommon Tool here.
• View the book the fiscal sponsorship supported - The Precipice
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Please contact Tony Chirinos directly about sharing Farewell – chirinos.tony@gmail.com
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CENTER is a 501(c)3 organization. Donations may qualify as a charitable deduction for federal income tax purposes. EIN 85-0428041
The fiscal sponsorship successfully supported Chirinos’ book project. The monograph includes the three projects to create a cohesive project exploring an oft-unseen environment and creates a dialogue between the two black-and-white projects with the tools interspersed between these two chapters.
About the Artist
Tony Chirinos is a Miami-based photographer who explores the themes of death and the vulnerability of life.
His goal as an artist is to produce work that engages the viewer aesthetically and intellectually, that also moves beyond mere entertainment to something, which asks the viewer to think critically. He considers himself a documentary-style photographer, one that uses visual language to create a photographic narrative. He strives to make sure that each photograph he makes can stand by itself, with as much dynamic range, intellectual understanding, and beauty as the entire photographic project. Tony had the good fortune to receive a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University in New York (2003). Beforehand Tony was trained as a Bio-medical photographer at Miami Children’s Hospital (1985), later in 1989 he created the Medical photography department at Baptist Health Systems until his departure in 2001. During those years he learned to produce the finest quality documentary photographs of the medical world which he later used as his artwork for some photographic projects. Tony is a Fellow of the South Florida Cultural Consortium (2010) and the recipient of CENTER’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2019). Currently, Tony am a tenured professor of photography at Miami Dade College and has been teaching since (2003).
tonychirinos.com
© Tony Chirinos