A successful photograph 'has a conversation with you every day'

Let's say that I was forced to list my favorite photographs of all time. One would undoubtedly be a snapshot of my late father walking along the beach talking to my son Thomas, almost 3 at the time, who trots along splashing in the water. It makes me laugh every time I see it.

I also would include more family snapshots and some historical photographs almost any of Abraham Lincoln. Then I'd get into images by famous photographers Imogen Cunningham for sure (what a great spirit!), the Frenchman jumping through a puddle immortalized by Henri Cartier Bresson, Robert Adams landscapes, Edward Weston nudes and peppers and so on.

When I think about it, there must be hundreds of images floating around inside my head snapshots, family portraits, images carefully hunted down and composed by "real" photographers, even X rays of broken bones and ultrasounds. It's a mess up there.

So, it was time for some spring cleaning, and the guy I wanted to help in my sorting was Chris Rauschenberg, photographer and founder of Blue Sky Gallery. He makes beguiling, deceptively simple images (like the ones at Elizabeth Leach Gallery right now), and he also has an advanced sorting mechanism for photographs. Which is to say, he's thought about the whole subject a lot. As you look, his seemingly simple pictures blossom into complexity. Sometimes it's incongruity: an abandoned running shoe at the edge of the labyrinth of an old cemetery in Marrakech,rolex oyster perpetual datejust blue face imitation, Morocco. Sometimes it's the jumble of subjects a shop in Juarez with the oddest possible collection of small statues. "I wouldn't buy this,sell rolex oyster perpetual datejust imitation, but I'd like it tumbling around in my head, please," Rauschenberg says.

As we look at each photograph, he explains a little about it, and then I start to see some of the reasons that little slice of found reality appealed to him. Some of them are easy: The white caftan stretched out to dry on a special contraption in Morocco will appear in a nightmare near me soon. Others, you have to look a little longer to find a ghostly shadow rising above an abandoned mattress on a rubble heap.

Strangely,replica rolex day date ladies, the photographs teach us to "see" them. Or not so strangely, because Rauschenberg encourages us to "notice things like these when you are walking around" the odd juxtapositions, the visual puns, the textures and structures in everyday objects. A successful photograph "has a conversation with you every day,rolex oysterdate fake, so it needs a lot of things it's willing to talk about."

Christopher RauschenbergChris Rauschenberg's photographs are on display through May 2 at Elizabeth Leach Gallery, including this one outside a caftan shop in Marrakesh, Morocco.

In the gallery's back room, the lesson kicks into high gear with pictures by other photographers. Rauschenberg did some quick explaining the "photography world" photographs (represented in the back room by Melody Owen and Matt McCormick) are images taken from the world, rendered two dimensional and shown to us.

The subjects of the "art world" images are created by the artists themselves Malia Jensen didn't just happen upon the word "Bobcat" in giant lights on the beach at dusk. Different methods and approaches to get interesting images.

That helped a lot, actually two categories of photographs, I exclaimed! Rauschenberg looked at me quizzically (or was it the way a teacher looks at an especially dim student?): "I like to think there are lots and lots of categories," he said. Of course! The snapshots, historic photographs and art photographs are just the beginning. Photojournalism, nature photography, landscapes each with its own history and brilliant images. And then there are photographs that straddle two or more categories. Suddenly, I was creating dozens of categories in my mind.

So yes, I'm sorting through my mental attic of stored images. And now I'm thinking that with so many new files and bins, I'll be able to accommodate a lot more photographs.