Irish Photographer Sells Potato Picture for $1 Million

Over the years, modern art has made a bigger joke out of itself than any comedian ever could. Everyone with taste knows that its crap, but the “artists” and their wealthy consumers like to pretend that they’re involved in something that is just too high brow for the common man to understand. By flocking to works that are banal and meaningless (i.e., works that most people hate) they get to be a part of a small community elitists, which allows them to feel superior to everyone else.

Case in point, Irish photographer Kevin Abosch, who is famous for taking portraits of celebrities like Malala Yousafza and Yoko Ono, recently admitted that he sold a picture of an organic Irish potato to a European businessman. The photo, which he calls “Potato #345” netted him a million euros, or $1.08 million. The image was only one part of a series of potato photos he took.

He claims the businessman was fascinated by the photo, after he saw it hanging in Abosch’s home in Paris. “We had two glasses of wine and he said, ‘I really like that’. Two more glasses of wine and he said: ‘I really want that.’ They set the price several weeks later. Abosch is known to court the rich and famous, and routinely sells his photos for 6 figures. Not surprisingly, he was invited to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.

As for why Abosch was taking pictures of potatoes in the first place, he told CNN that “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.”

And that’s how you sell a potato for a million bucks.