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 that is 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, or non-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 understandings.

Barbara Weissberger

Barbara Weissberger