NOTES: The potato came to me several years ago as I was scrapping about for something bodily to photograph that was not a body, not my body. A still life subject that would act like a figure. A food as humble and lumpy as the body that consumes it. A food that speaks of earthiness, whose parts are called skin, flesh, eyes.

Potatoes are pedestrian, a global staple. Potatoes are survivalist food. And food is never outside of economies even when home grown or foraged in an act of self-reliance or a desire to opt out or out of necessity. I remind myself of this as I arrange potatoes within the quiet of the studio where things seem freer and other values and uses may take hold.

But what is at least as interesting to me now as the connotations of tubers, is the awkwardness of potatoes in the contexts within which I place them. A potato in pantyhose. Potatoes and blue jeans. How this weirdness creates a gap in meaning. And how the humor of such putting together of unlikely things makes room for thought outside of received understanding.

Barbara Weissberger

Barbara Weissberger