Appropriation artist Richard Prince finds himself at the center of yet another copyright controversy. As you may recall, in a highly publicized suit and appeal, photographer Patrick Cariou sued Prince for copyright infringement over images in Prince’s show, Canal Zone. In Canal Zone, Prince appropriated images from Cariou’s book, “Yes, Rasta,” and used those images as source material for a show he presented at Gagosian Gallery in 2008. The lower court granted Cariou’s motion for summary judgment, finding that Prince’s use of Cariou’s photographs did not constitute a fair use under the U.S. Copyright Act. On appeal, in a decision criticized for its application of the fair use factors, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit found that Prince’s use of Cariou’s work was a fair use in all but five of the 30 photographs at issue. The Supreme Court denied certiorari, and the parties later privately settled.
Now, Prince is making waves again for using images that individual users uploaded to Instagram without the users’ permission. Prince’s show, New Portraits, was on display at Gagosian Gallery in New York from September to October of 2014 and featured screenshots of photographs with Prince’s cryptic comments inserted below the picture and with the Instagram logos and branding removed. In February, counsel for photographer David Graham, whose photograph was among the images appropriated for Prince’s show, sent a cease and desist letter to Gagosian and Prince requesting that they stop distributing Graham’s photograph. Other individuals whose work was featured in the show have publicly expressed a variety of emotions from puzzled, flattered, to frustrated.
