The internet is home to a proliferation of images created and shared by individuals, often featuring themselves. Now some of these appear on the walls of a New York art gallery.
In the exhibit “New Portraits”, artist Richard Prince uses what appears to be a fairly simple formula:

Choose a photograph of a person posted on Instagram.
Add a comment.
Take a screenshot.
Print onto canvas.

Voilà. Art.

Repurposing images is certainly not a new phenomenon in visual art; digital technology and the internet simply enable it on a massive scale.

Writing seventy-four years before the creation of Instagram, Walter Benjamin notes that technical reproduction “can put the copy of the original into situations which would be out of reach for the original itself”. He recognizes that technological reproduction enables the removal of content from its place of origin and facilitates its dissemination, thus creating the potential for repurposing and new interpretations.

Reaction to Richard Prince’s exhibit has involved, unsurprisingly, visitors taking photographs with Prince’s “New Portraits” and then posting these new layered, mise-en-abyme images on Instagram. The gallery visitor reproduces and repurposes Prince’s gallery piece in the composition of her own photograph, and returns it to the space of the internet.

Benjamin also comments that technological developments allow the popularization of artistic creation whereby the masses themselves become creators, problematizing the distinction between professional artist and the public.
However, in the case of “New Portraits”, despite the dual stages of creation – by Instagram user and by Prince – the distinction between the “artist” and the original photographer remains intact, defined primarily by economics and prestige. As Prince has demonstrated, Instagram photos are (more or less) free for the taking. Conversely, the exhibited photographs – created by Prince as “artist” – are copyrighted and sell for around $40,000 each.

Prince’s art – a product of our age of image reproducibility – repurposes the popular, but its exhibition in a gallery space suggests elevation and “high art” value. The public who view the exhibit are themselves photographers, but their photos are not found in galleries. They are found on Instagram.