In October 1972 I got the idea to hawk my photographs from a supermarket shopping cart at Holyoke Center in Harvard Square from Columbus Day to Christmas. Ed Lang, Ilene Lang, Mike Mazur, and some of my students were aghast. 'You're making your work too available. People won't take care of it if they don't have to pay a lot of money for it. You should wait to be in a gallery,' they advised me. But I wanted to see what people liked, what they didn't like. I wanted to see what would happen. It was one of those times Harvey and I had broken up and I was in the mood for some excitement. I figured.if I did it for fun, people would sense that.

And of course, it made that whole year. I printed things that until then existed only on contact prints. I got a sense of cohesion in all my separate images. I got a sense of audience. I was a photographer; I wasn't just creating material for an elaborate filing system. People who had never heard of me or my work came over to the wagon to see what was going on. I made money. I made friends.

That first year, the police had a vendetta against all the street vendors. They chased us down the block and threatened to arrest us. But Harvey called the Chief of Police and the City Solicitor and told them that photographs were protected by the First Amendment. Their case against me would never hold in court. After that, I was free and clear. Christmas 1973, I made seven hundred dollars.

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