All of us who live in or hail from Buffalo have a vision of what the city is, and what it should be.
Those visions are inevitably shaped by our individual experiences walking the streets of our fair city as much as they are by our collective moments of triumph and despair. While the images of our city can be capture in the historic architecture of towering buildings like City Hall, what has come to define this city, in many minds, is its people.
When CEPA Gallery sent 37 community members out into the city with cameras to document their visions of Buffalo, many returned with soaring images of the structures and places we have all come to know. Cecile Biltekoff immediately left her downtown apartment and ventured out to document something many forget or choose to ignore, but is as much a part of our community and our identity as anything else.
She returned with the above image of the shopping carts which have long found their home on the streets outside her own residence. They belong to a man who made the streets of Buffalo his home, and are filled with the possessions a lifetime can gather.
“It was the first and only thing I thought of when it came to my vision of Buffalo,” Biltekoff said. “To me, it personified so much of what Buffalo is about, and also what our problems are. It was a human story as well as a story that’s bigger than the any one person. A lot of people in my building had complained about the shopping carts; they wanted them gotten rid of. What they don’t understand is that this is somebody’s wordly goods. And it’s a symbol of a problem we have, a problem that we share because we’re all human.”
Through the simple act of photographing these carts, Biltekoff was recognizing the place of the man, and those who live like him, in Buffalo. Seeing him every day, he became a part of Cecile’s life, and a part of the life of our city, his story interwoven with that of thousands of others who call Buffalo home.
“I was very aware of the fact that it was somebody’s story, out there for all of us to see, exposed to the world, very naked, very vulnerable,” she explained.
The story told in the photo is that of Charley Earl Portis, who lived throughout the streets of our city for years, pushing all of his worldly possessions in his carts. It was a lifestyle different that yours or mine, as we sit in front of our computer screens, but one no less meaningful and no less real.
“We’re all equal, we’re all the same, and if the person happens to live like that it doesn’t make him any better or worse than anyone else,” Biltekoff said. “He wants what i want, he wants to be loved.”
And he was loved, Charley’s niece Katrina Arnold said. Charley always had a family to visit, she said, a place to stay anytime he wanted. His lifestyle was his choice, she explained, a rebellion against corporate America, against the “rat race” society so many of us have blindly bought into.
“My uncle, whom many of you may have looked down on, pitied, gawked at in queer curiousity, or offered help to, was as right as rain and as complete a person as any of us,” she wrote in a letter after seeing the exhibit. “He was a loving brother, son, uncle, and much more. He never met a stranger, could hold his own in a conversation on any topic you could imagine, and knew the lord and the bible as well as any minister in the world.”
“I think the reason he became, as you say, a part of the city is because of his personality and charm, coupled with the mystery and intrigue he provoked in people,” Arnold added in an interview. “To look at him, you might have felt pity for him, or colored his story based on what you felt a homeless person’s life must be. But to speak to him, you would have been intrigued, humored, and educated.”
Charlie Earl Portis’ life on earth ended on April 3, 2007, shortly after the Visions of Buffalo exhibit opened at the CEPA Gallery. Arnold was touched when she visited the CEPA exhibit and saw the picture of her uncle’s carts displayed as a vision of the city, a very visible statement of the impact we as individuals have on each other. A copy of the photo was matted and framed for his memorial service.
Charley’s time in Buffalo will now live on in even those he never met — it will resonate in people he passed on the street, in those who visited the exhibit, those who purchased copies of the print, and in you, reading this very story today.
“I must admit I was proud of the impact he’s made,” Arnold said. “There are people who will leave this life with little to no impact on the world. I can’t say that was uncle Charley.”
Support for Buffalo Rising comes from:
Support for Buffalo Rising comes from: