“[The artist] attempts and intends to make a significant comment on or interpretation of human experience as [the artist] knows it.” From the testimony of Mark Schorer, a defense witness in Allen Ginsburg’s Howl obscenity trial

My father was a prizefighter, and my first job as a photographer was shooting for boxing magazines. Because I was adept at photographing moving bodies, I got work shooting tech rehearsals for the San Francisco Ballet during the Smuin/Chistensen regime. The regimentation of that job (and of the art itself) led me to other forms of dance, and I spent several years working with outlaw Bay Area dance/theatre groups like Tumbleweed, Contraband and Mangrove. It was during this period that I developed a way of seeing that I think Mark Schorer was referring to in the above quote. 

In addition to my addiction to Edward Weston’s Daybooks, my commitment to this way of seeing was reinforced by my friendships with Henry Wessel and Garry Winogrand. Henry and I were at Penn State together, and we started the two-man photo agency Photographic Resources. Despite the all-too-short existence of our endeavor we managed to have our work at the Mexican border published. I can’t imagine a better teacher than Henry. Through him I met Garry Winogrand at a time when I was beginning to make a living as a screenwriter, a job that frequently took me to Los Angeles. Garry was living there at the time, and together we’d walk the streets of Hollywood, Venice and Santa Monica. I could never shoot as much as Garry, but under those circumstances I shot less than usual because I was watching him more than anything else.

I photograph because that’s what I do. I wish for nothing less than my photographs to have the same kind of insight as the works of Homer, Dickens, Conrad and Dostoyevsky.

- Ted Pushinsky