A Man Spent More Than $1 Million on a Picture of a Potato

Ever blown your grocery budget on expensive organic vegetables? Well, at least you didn’t spend a little over $1 million on a picture of an organic potato. Recently, a European businessman shelled out the staggering sum for a portrait taken by celebrity photographer Kevin Abosch.

According to the Irish Times, the unnamed buyer caught sight of the work, titled Potato #345, while visiting Abosch’s home in Paris. The picture, taken with a digital camera in 2010, features an organic spud illuminated by a single light against a black background. Abosch made three prints of the photograph, keeping one for his personal collection and donating another to an art museum in Serbia. After several glasses of wine, the admiring businessman agreed to pay a non-negotiable price for the portrait, London's Sunday Times reports.

Over the course of his career, Abosch has captured everyone from Johnny Depp and Yoko Ono to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai and Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg. Why did he shift his camera lens toward spuds? They apparently remind him of people. “I see commonalities between humans and potatoes that speak to our relationship as individuals within a collective species,” he said. “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.”

Potato #345 is reportedly the most Abosch has ever been paid for a non-commissioned portrait. According to CNN, the work is the 15th most expensive photo ever sold.

[h/t Irish Times]