Potato Power, 2012 Caleb Charland

This article was taken from the February 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.

You've probably plugged lights into potatoes during science lessons -- but not on this scale. For this photograph (above), taken for Wired in the summer of 2012, Caleb Charland spent two days wiring 300 potatoes to a lamp, and shot the results. "I remembered doing potato batteries in school," the Maine-based artist says. "It just went from there."


Charland began merging science and photography in 2005, inspired by primary-school books of experiments, but only took his work outdoors in 2011, when he wired a 240-hectare orchard to the lamp used here. "It's not a functional supply of alternative energy, but it suggests that there is this electricity, this inherent energy in nature," says the 32-year-old. Working outdoors, though, is risky. "It's more nerve-wracking. I try to leave as few variables as possible. And it took a lot of time just to find a potato farmer." Charland found his in a bar and drove the six hours to his field. The lamp runs on 3.5 volts and looks brighter in the final work due to its long exposure -- which also allowed Charland to capture star trails. "I was expecting to get a few of those in there, but then when nature has her way... That's her brush-stroke."

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In summer 2013, he will return to the same field to try connecting the lamp to a harvest of beets, and hopes to visit a vineyard in southern Italy. "I tried it with a bag of grapes at home," he says. "It took 120 grapes to get 1.5 volts. You do the maths."

calebcharland.com