Today on Monday Mysteries we consider the worth of a potato.  

Well, more specifically, the worth of a photo of a potato.  One of the most expensive photos in the world is a photo of a potato, Potato #345 (2010), by photographer Kevin Abosch, which sold recently for over a million dollars.

I’m not making this up; you can read about it here.

Of course, the official description of the photo clarifies that the image is an example of Abosch’s  “iconic black backdrop” portraits, just using a vegetable instead of a person. His portraits  of people in the tech world sell for a great deal of money, but not as much as his “portrait” of the potato. The story goes that an anonymous collector in France insisted on buying the potato photo off Abosch’s wall, even though the photographer set the price at a non-negotiable price of over a million dollars.

Really.

On the one hand, it brings to mind P.T. Barnum’s famous saying, which you can hear in song form in this clip starting at 3:30. 

But then again …  forget I said that. Maybe there’s something to this. I do find that a sweet potato, for example, symbolizes much about the challenges of life, don’t you?  I mean, think how hard it must be to go around as a long, orange tuber in a world of plain round potatoes. So a portrait of a noble sweet potato … well … that could be something worth paying for …

Well, maybe. But with that in mind  I present my newest artistic photo, done in my own “iconic panoramic cellphone camera” style:

Sweep Potato #0102 ( L. Lee McIntyre, 2016)

Thanks to Chris for the idea for the photo, riffing off the idea of the “sweep panorama” photos I take on my phone.

How much would you pay for that? I’m glad you asked. This week only, you can purchase a signed, limited edition print of this work for only $500,000. That’s a special price only for you, dear readers of this blog — this week’s sweet potato-print deal, as it were.

Of course, I can’t afford to sell it at that price forever, so next week a print of Sweep Potato #0102 will be a non-negotiable $1,000,000 per print.  If anyone has the number of that potato-photo collector in France, let me know…