Frankie Chigozie (In Between Greens), Collaborator Portrait
Frankie Chigozie
Frankie Chigozie (he/they) is a visual artist and casual photographer born and raised in Austin, TX.
Instagram: @drawnbyfrankie
Email: drawnbyfrankie@gmail.com
I’ve Been Here Before
I've Been Here Before examines the everyday novelty of spaces and places most familiar to me. I seized on moments to shoot around my home, the city bus, the office I work at, and in various other local points to highlight a sense of belonging to these places, mundane as they are. Shots featuring myself either in whole like the seated self-portrait, or in part like my legs seen resting on pavement, are windows into my experience of inhabiting a space I've long adjusted in. Across this body of work visual elements like detail, color, and most especially natural light & first-person POV accentuate the given composition comprising each shot. Austin is the only place I've ever known so far, and capturing pieces of my lived experience with film for the first time, at this point of my life, presented an opportunity to better understand myself by way of producing a sort of visual-spatial map that's unique only to me.
01. Taking up the left half of the frame is a low-to-the-ground, side view of Frankie seated on the front porch, with just his legs shown. Both feet rest on the concrete stoop with one foot closest to the camera canted on one side. On the right a white Honda sedan is parked on the driveway with only a portion of the hood in frame. A fence lines the yard in the background before disappearing behind a tree trunk on the right.
02. An outdoor blanket partly folded on one side rests on the ground with a few leaves & a twig strewn across it. It is striped and multicolored - reds, blues, greens - and nearly covers the width of the frame, with roughly the left third of it scorched by a light leak.
03. From inside the living room, lit only by broad daylight. A west-facing window with somewhat tattered, mostly drawn blinds reveals a quiet street scene outside, including a pair of rat skeletons adorning the exterior sill.
04. Frankie is seated on the front porch of his house, looking directly at the camera. Beside them on the right is an open chair with dark wooden legs and back, complete with a tan seat. On the other side stands a small table with items like a can of cider and mosquito repellent. To the left of the table is a black, upholstered chair. The house has a green and white exterior finish, with multiple leaves laying scattered below the stoop.
05. Inside the bedroom, viewed at a slight downward angle from the bedside. a broom is propped against the bed beside a small pile of swept material on the hardwood floor. Other belongings including a black laundry hamper, a white folding table, and a black trash bin with a dustpan in front of it line the walls.
06. A sheet of blue paper is tacked to a wall. On it a clothespin labeled “Frankie” is affixed on the top right corner of the paper, titled “BATHROOM CHORES.” Below that is the word “weekly,” followed by three lines of text saying (from top to bottom) “SWEEP BATHROOM HALL + bathroom, CLEAN TOILET,” “CLEAN MIRRORS, CLEAN SINK,” and “WASH HANDTOWEL, SCRUB TUB.” The “Frankie” clothespin is positioned on the first line of text.
07. Close up of a bedroom wall featuring one end of a black, floating shelf. immediately to the left of the shelf bracket at the center of the image is a pinned note containing written poetry. three different picture frames flank the note & bracket, with two on the left and one to the right.
08. A carpeted floor patterned with magenta bars on black/gray tiles in an office space.
09. Outside. A POV shot looking down at Frankie’s feet, in dark/gray laceless shoes & black tube socks, resting on the pavement.
10. Outside. A red car appears on the right continuing rightward out of frame as it speeds along a major roadway. The top and right sides of the frame are respectively dark from a steel overhang and vertical core comprising a bus stop shelter. Directly across from the stop on the other side of the street is an apartment building under construction.
11. Outside, a profile of a park bench some distance away is surrounded by trees. in the center foreground a few steps lead up to the bench on terraced ground.
12. Inside a city bus, at the very back with the camera trained to a window on the opposite side. The open seats are blue. A long, white strip of light hangs above the window near the top of the frame.
13. A pair of white bars on a gate divide a view of hedges lining the other side. In the background are a few trees in front of a single, windowless, cream-colored office building straddling the upper left corner before appearing to terminate at the top center.
14. A view of Barton Springs pool from the shallow, south end. There are numerous bathers in the spring-fed pool on this partly cloudy afternoon, backdropped by trees and the Austin skyline to the northeast. The frame is partly obscured by the photographer’s fingers.
15. A POV shot from the saddle of Frankie’s bike, looking down at their black drop bars while stopped at an intersection waiting for a green light. The bike’s shadow is cast on pavement occupying the bottom center-right of the frame, with a glimpse - closer to the camera - of Frankie's right knee.
16. A lamppost doubling as a traffic light anchors the intersection of Springdale Road and Airport Blvd. The walk timer has 8 seconds left for anyone around - none in this frame - to cross. Surrounding it are graffiti-covered buildings and uneven, sandy-looking pavement rounding the street corner.
17. A sprinkler sprays a jet of water, illuminated by the setting sun, on a grassy area separating a parking lot on the left from a sidewalk on the right.
18. A view out a window of a city bus, showing three downtown buildings in the center background on a cloudy day.
19. Outside, looking directly ahead at a stop sign on a neighborhood intersection. To the right and foreground, a rising mass of leaves continues past the top of the frame. At the bottom of the image is Frankie’s shadow, cast on the sidewalk stretching forward.
20. Downtown Austin under evening light. From the vantage point of Halcyon at the southwest corner of 4th & Lavaca streets. The goldenrod glow of the setting sun illuminates the corridor of buildings looking west.
21. A view out a window of a city bus showing the sun setting behind a silhouetted, low-lying structure. The window, making up the whole frame, is covered with pixelated vinyl of an advertisement wrap causing the light to scatter radially.
22. Looking up at a mostly clear sky between the boundaries of two trees. The sun shines thru the tree on the left, with a cloud on the upper left corner of the frame appearing conjoined to said tree.
23. An overhead look at dense bundles of tree leaves lit up by the flash. The small white circle in the area of black at the lower right is the moon.
24. Outside at night. The flash lights up a limber group of small red flowers and other plants growing in the same leftward direction.
25. A stop sign at night with modified wording saying “STOP ALL WAR.”