By: Katrina Penaflor Managing Editor
Would you spend a million dollars on a picture of a potato? Like, the things fries are made of. Also, there will be nothing else in the picture—it’s just a potato on a black background.
It’s not even held by anyone cool, like David Beckham or John Stamos. It’s. Just. A. Potato.
Well, a European businessman did. He spent just over $1 million on a photograph of a spud.
To have the kind of money to just casually be like, “Oh, I think I need a picture of a potato, hopefully I can find one that fits into my budget of a million dollars.”
The picture was taken by Kevin Abosch, a famous Irish photographer, or at least famous enough to credit such an outrageously high sale.
Abosch has taken pictures of people like Stephen Spielberg and Malala Yousafzai, and his photos average a cost of half a million dollars.
This is what Abosch told the Irish Times about the photograph: “I see commonalities between humans and potatoes that speak to our relationship as individuals within a collective species […] generally, the life of a harvested potato is violent and taken for granted. I use the potato as a proxy for the ontological study of the human experience.”
Well, I do have to give it to Abosch. That’s probably one of the greatest and most emotionally gripping potato descriptions I’ve ever read.
But did it make the picture worth its million-dollar price tag? I think not.
I wonder if I started taking pictures of potatoes, if I could bring in that kind of cash. Hell, I’ll settle for 20 dollars for the picture, or 10, I’m not picky.
And, to the man who bought it, I hope it hangs proudly above some lavish fireplace in your home. I also wonder how many times it will be mistaken for a framed Instagram picture of what you were making for dinner one night.
