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$90,000 That Proves Someone Else Can Sell Your Instagram Photos and Make Money

$90,000 That Proves Someone Else Can Sell Your Instagram Photos and Make Money

By Indo-Asian News Service | Updated: 26 May 2015 16:55 IST

Controversial artist Richard Prince has struck again, this time around selling someone's Instagram photo for $90,000 without the original user's permission.

Prince finds eye-catching posts from the popular photo-sharing app and prints them out on a giant scale.

Prince's latest exhibition at New York Frieze has made hundreds of thousands of dollars but the photographers whose images he took will receive nothing.

The Instagram user whose photograph was reproduced without permission and subsequently sold for more than $90,000 (roughly Rs. 56 lakhs) has said she is not going to "go after him" for a share of the money, The Independent reported.

"I'm not gonna go after him," Doe Deere, one of the women whose photographs Prince used, wrote in a recent Instagram post.

Figured I might as well post this since everyone is texting me. Yes, my portrait is currently displayed at the Frieze Gallery in NYC. Yes, it's just a screenshot (not a painting) of my original post. No, I did not give my permission and yes, the controversial artist Richard Prince put it up anyway. It's already sold ($90K I've been told) during the VIP preview. No, I'm not gonna go after him. And nope, I have no idea who ended up with it! 😳 #lifeisstrange #modernart #wannabuyaninstagrampicture

A photo posted by Doe Deere (@doedeere) on May 17, 2015 at 9:05am PDT

The blue-haired founder and CEO of cosmetics company Lime Crime also shared the original photo, explaining that the doll in the picture was made by her friend the artist Joshua David McKenney, who also wasn't credited in Prince's work.

"Richard Prince removed my original caption, before printing and displaying it (without my knowledge) in the Frieze Gallery. I wanted to put the focus back onto where it belongs: the beautiful, hand-crafted doll,a Deere wrote.

Prince, 65, whose New Portraits exhibition consisting of 37 screenshots of Instagram photos sold out at New York Frieze last week, is known for appropriating found images and treads a fine line between copyright infringement and art.

"I don't see any difference now between what I collect and what I make," Prince was quoted as saying.

He came under fire when his Instagram screenshots were first exhibited last year at the Gagosian gallery in New York, not just because the images were "borrowed", but because most of them featured beautiful women in compromising poses including porn stars and a candid selfie in the gynaecologist's office.

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