THE WORLD WAS stunned when a photo of a potato by an Irish photographer sold for a million euro last month.
But Kevin Abosch is not the only photographer selling photos of our beloved potatoes.
Cork man and general chancer who goes by the name Joshua Riviera is excellently parodying the shocking buy by setting up a whole website dedicated to photos of potatoes.
He writes:
I am examining the concepts of otherness and equality by confronting the viewer with photos of potatoes coupled with thought provoking text that arises from the individual potato, this juxtaposition in which the viewer is forced into the role of ‘the other’ creates an uncomfortable experience, leaving the viewer to question their relationship with the potato and examine their biased preconceptions.
Deep.
He told DailyEdge.ie that his work is in no way associated with Abosch’s.
The reality is these are completely different potatoes, shot using a very different technique and equipment.
He tells us he hasn’t sold any yet, but came up with the pricing structure using ‘visualisation’.
I used visualisation to imagine an instance where someone I knew with money offered to purchase one of my pieces and he offered €70. I said I wouldn’t take any less than double that figure and we settled on €140.
Bit less than a million, so.
We were curious if he picked his own potatoes or bought them in Dunnes, but he claims the potatoes aren’t Irish at all.
His work uses uses portraits of “non Irish potatoes, potatoes which are routinely discriminated against, to force the viewer to confront certain uncomfortable truths about themselves and their biases”.
Each potato is named, and comes with a manifesto. Such as this one, The Failure:
It is Monday morning and you cannot pull yourself from under the bedsheets that are tangled around you from all your tossing and turning during the night. When you eventually struggle to meet your daily tasks your path brings you face to face with an abject failure of a potato, your eyes meet and you wince in disgust. Only to see the same expression mirrored back at you. What have you become?
So, who’s gonna be the first to own one of these pieces of art? Tis only the price of a couple of pints when you think about it.
