There is a guy who can sell your Instagram photos for 10 million shillings

Meet the person who sells Instagram photos for $100,000

What will you do if you found out that your photo has been sold for over $100,000 in the Art Galleries without your consent? Richard Prince is the artist who takes screen shots of strangers on Instagram photos then repurposes them with some alterations to then sell the images at a very high price in art galleries. Instagram user Doe Deere is one of the victims. Her Intagram photo holding a doll was sold at Frieze Art Fair in New York.

Doe Deere explained that she did not give permission to Prince to sell her photo. The photo is already sold at $90K during the VIP preview. Deere wrote in an Instagram post that showed Prince’s print of her photo on display. Deere further explained she won’t go after him and she doesn’t know who bought the photo.

This kind of controversy is nothing new for Prince. From September through October 2014, New York’s Gagosian Gallery showed “New Portraits,” an exhibition of 38 works by Prince, which were all portraits that featured images taken from other people’s Instagram accounts. None of the Instagram photos were acquired with these people’s permission, reports PetaPixel.

The unjust activities exhibited by prince have raised so much hate and critics against his work in the art world. Artnet published a piece called “Richard Prince Sucks” during the Gagosian show.

Back in 2014, Prince settled a copyright suit with photographer Patrick Cariou. The settlement was a conclusion of a five-year case in which Cariou had sued Prince over using photographs he took of Rastafarians as the foundation for a series of paintings Prince sold for millions. Prince argued that his work falls under the fair-use exceptions to federal copyright protections, reported the New York Times. Ultimately an appeals court found that out of the 30 works in Prince’s series, 25 fell under the fair use exception, while five works were sent back to the lower court for a determination. The terms of the settlement over those five pieces were not disclosed publicly.

For Prince, this kind of work dates back to his origins as an artist. He started out in the late 1970s working for Time Life, where his job was to tear up the magazine and give the editorial parts to the people who wrote the articles. Using other people’s images for personal satisfaction or financial advantages is common in social media, if you like posting amazing photos be on the lookout because you never know, may be your photo is making people millionaires.