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This month painter and photographer Richard Prince sold other people’s Instagram photos at a New York City art gallery as part of the Frieze Art Fair in New York. Prince did so without warning or permission from the photos’ owners. This might make you think twice about posting photos on social media.
Prince’s collection, “New Portraits,” contains mostly photos of women in sexy poses that had been enlarged to six-foot-tall Inkjet prints. The prints were popular; he sold almost every piece for a whopping $90,000 each, reports Vulture.
“New Portraits” first opened in 2014 at Gagosian Gallery in Manhattan.
Prince has been “re-photographing” since the 1970s, and now he’s turned to social media for his materials. Of course, along the way he has faced several infringement lawsuits during his career. But legally, as long as Prince makes slight changes to the photos they then become his creation.
“This is what he did with the Instagram photos. Although he did not alter the usernames or the photos themselves, he removed captions,” reports The Washington Post. Prince added curious comments on each photo and the tagline from the account “richardprince1234,” which has 10,200 followers but oddly not one photo. Instagram can’t take steps to help you once the photos have been taken off the platform.
But forget Prince, you can make money off your own Instagram photos. Some bloggers in fact have made up to $20,000 for a photo they posted online.
Harper’s Bazaar“Reach out to those who are doing it and doing it well. Contact bloggers in your area to gain different outlooks as to how they found success, survey friends and family on what they would like to see, buy and even those things they can’t stand. This will help you do a few things: build business relationships, give your name a face and find your voice,” reports Rolling Out.
If you keep at it and continue to build your online reputation and brand, those needing your services will take notice. According to Harper’s Bazaar, brands dole out more than $1 billion each year on sponsored Instagram posts.
