NOTES: I came to the potato several years ago as I was looking 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 as the connotations of tubers, is the humor of (the images of) potatoes and their weird relationship the other materials with which I place them. Potato and pantyhose. Potato and blue jeans. Potato and quilt patterns. How this weirdness and humor create a gap in meaning and that gap invites association, uncertainty, and the imaginal.

Barbara Weissberger

Barbara Weissberger