Amanda Abodell:
22, Living in San Fransisco
Part of Taylor Swift’s ‘clique’
Says that they’re feminist, but is very cis, white feminism
Pursuing a career in acting, mostly lands small, background actor gigs, also does some modeling
Hadn’t paid attention to Richard Prince’s original comment, but angered when found out that he had intended to sell her photo
Beatrice Collins:
19, Living in Uguene, OR
Lives in a small, cockroach infested apartment, but tries to keep Instagram life as glamorous as possible
Earns money through ads posted on social media
Doesn’t like to hang out with girls because they’re too ‘cliquey’, has mostly male friends
Underage drinking
Went to community college for half a semester, then dropped out without telling parents
Trying to gain money to move to LA to pursue modeling
Wanted Richard Prince to use her photos as a piece, contacted him directly
Interviewer: What was the original reaction when you found out what Richard Prince’s pieces were selling for?
Amanda Abodell: I was and still am livid. I took a silly picture that I just found visually appealing, and here’s this mid 60 year-old man taking a picture of me and deciding he had some right to copy a picture and sell it.
Beatrice Collins: I mean, in a way, he kinda does have a right to take it. I don’t know. I feel like he’s got really no clue what he’s doing but, like, didn’t Andy Warhol just take things that weren’t his and call it his art?
Int: Please elaborate on that.
Collins: I mean, in a way he kinda changed it. Not like the picture itself, but, like, the caption and stuff. I didn’t post that picture with the caption he put and the comment was his own free thought.
Abodell: You’re kidding, right?
Int: Had you found out about the piece before or after it went up for auction?
Collins: Way before. I actually tried to contact him to get my piece in there, turns out he had already intended on using one! So that was pretty cool for me I suppose.
Abodell: I think it was as they were up for auction. I had a friend in the city who heard about a gallery auction so she went, and there was my face, my picture, my bathroom wall, all mine. Not his. I don’t understand why one would even want that picture up on their wall, let alone purchase it for an upwards of $90,000.
Collins: But, once you put something on the internet, don’t you give free range for any who decide to use it?
Abodell: No! Social media should never be thought of like that. Sure you should keep in mind that whatever goes up will never go away, but that doesn’t mean sell it with your name on it for a pretty penny!
Int: Has this hindered your social media presence at all?
Collins: Not really hindered, but I’m definitely on social media more now-
Abodell: Do you know what hindered means?
Collins: -because now I feel like I should be posting the best content all of the time.
Abodell: No. That’s really not how social media should work. But neither is the way I feel about it now. I feel like now I’m constantly tip-toeing around everything I post and I really try to not post photos of myself anymore just because some asshole might come back around and take those pictures, too. Other people post photos taken of me on their accounts all of the time, and sometimes that even bothers me. Richard Prince could easily switch around the usernames to make it seem like he took another from my page again.
Int: Have these pieces helped you gain any social media following?
Abodell: I don’t really think so. I mostly think that if I’ve gained any recent following it’s from Taylor Swift posting pictures with me in my apartment, if she’s in LA she’s usually at my place. Otherwise I think it mostly just made the followers I do have now angry. I made a super long post about it a while ago that I’ve since taken down, but it was mostly me calling him a useless, talentless prick.
Int: Have you seen any of his other works?
Abodell: I don’t really care to. He made his impression on me from these pieces and that’s all I really need to know. Considering Beatrice here is just barely not a minor, and I know damn well that Acacia Brinley, another social media presence he stole from, is a minor, and that’s just not really okay to me. He’s exploiting minors on top of the fact that he’s just stealing others’ photographs.
Collins: Okay, first off, I had posted that photo not long after I turned 19, making me a legal adult in every state. And to answer your question, yes, I do think that my social media following has grown immensely. I feel like I’m respected more on Instagram now, it’s no longer just teenage boys commenting the water emoji or something similar trying to be sexual, now it’s more users that have a similar following to me that will comment supportive things for me.
Abodell: And you think they’re being truthful? That’s just what people do. You probably got a cut of your picture and used it to buy followers.
Int: Amanda, please stay relaxed so we can keep this interview in order. If you were to contact Prince directly, what are the things you would talk to him about?
Abodell: To put it lightly, I’d rip him a new asshole. I can’t even put my anger into words without feeling like my chest is going to explode. I’ve tried so hard to get him sued for copyright, but each time I try it’s a new reason as to why I’m unable to. I’ve been in contact with T Taylor Swift’s lawyer as well and am trying to get him to represent this case for me, because I can’t wait to get everything this man owns taken away from him so he no longer has this luxurious lifestyle where he exploits people.
Collins: I mean, as I mentioned earlier, I have contacted Prince before. He was respectful on the phone, a bit awkward to say the least, though. He didn’t really seem to understand my calling and asking him about the picture, because he had thought that I somehow found out that he was using one of mine. I think now if I met him in person, I’d just really shake his hand and congratulate him for doing something nobody else had thought to before.
Int: What do you personally think that Prince’s message is for these pieces?
Collins: I think he’s really trying to show how consuming social media is in all of our lives. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because I feel like it connects us to the world more. So he’s trying to show this connection that we have to everything. I have people in New York looking at my picture everyday now, and I’m here living in Eugene, OR in a small apartment making more posts everyday. And they have a permanent piece of me on their wall now.
Abodell: Yeah, no. I think the man is just a few steps away from the looney bin and doesn’t really understand boundaries. Cropping something doesn’t make a photo yours, just as adding a few lines of text doesn’t make it yours. I guess maybe that’s what he’s trying to make a statement of, is how loose copyright laws are. Maybe he’s trying to get the laws made tighter, but before doing that he wanted to make some money off of it.
Int: Now, since we’ve all just watched this documentary, I’m going to be bringing in Prince. I’ve got a few more questions for you all three to answer.
Richard Prince: Oh, you’re really going to make me do this?
Int: Richard, please sit. Ladies, before I ask Prince to answer questions as well, this one’s just for you two. From the documentary, are your ideas more set in place, or have they changed?
Abodell: I still think this man is a lunatic-
Prince: Seriously?
Abodell: But in a different way than before. I’m now set in my idea that Richard, you really have no idea what you’re doing. And perhaps if you hadn’t known about these copyright laws before you even began, and maybe you didn’t, you really wouldn’t have cared. And if you would have been sued successfully by me or others, you really would have been given no choice but to give up your money from these pieces. Do you even really care about the money you’re getting? Do you even use it?
Prince: You’ve got me there, I don’t really need the $90,000 for each piece I sell, because all of my galleries and studios and home have all been paid off. I’m just paying for meals and my bills. The money really does go towards my wife and kids, they want more material items than I do. I just like making things that I decide are pleasing. I don’t really know what I’m doing right off the bat but I get somewhere.
Collins: I mean, I really don’t think I can base my idea of the social media part off of this film, but I do see more about Prince’s other side of creativity. I think that a lot if it is experimental, doing things that haven’t been done before. That’s been your career, huh Richard? It’s really neat to see. He doesn’t really have a specific style, so that’s cool, and he doesn’t have a hundred people working making his art. It’s all him.
Int: In what ways do you think that Prince has been inspired by artists like Andy Warhol?
Prince: I like to call myself a modern day Warhol, because he morphed things that weren’t really his for taking. I mean, they were his for taking because they were all public photographs or public figures, but you know what I mean. I take things on the internet because once those are there they’re there forever. For my cowboys collection I used images that were already public and changed it just enough to make it mine. The entire image was for Marlboro, but the small part was mine. For my Instagram collection, I was really involved in the idea that anyone can comment on a photo and make it kinda seem like they came up with the caption for that photo. It’s a really cool concept, I think.
Collins: I think comparing Richard to Warhol is fantastic. They both use things that are currently popular in modern day, like the cowboys, that was popular for Marlboro whenever that came out, I’m sure, and Instagram is SO popular today. I think it’s awesome that you’re using these things so popular and discussed everyday.
Abodell: I don’t think that’s a fair comparison to make. Warhol did take photos of celebrities and used things like the Campbell’s soup cans, but he did so in a way to show that consumerism makes things seem utterly useless. I guess you can say that Prince is doing that same thing, because I really don’t even want to use Instagram anymore because of this stunt he’s pulling. Warhol was an actual artist with everything he did, whether it was painting the soup cans with a stencil, not a screenshot and a copy and paste in Photoshop, but actually physically taking time to plan out every paining and screen print. Not whatever you’re trying pass for art.
Int: We’ve got time for one more question, Prince, what do you think is going to be your next art collection, and ladies, what is your reaction?
Prince: I might pick up something with street art. I live so close to New York City that I might go into town one day and just decide to bring a stencil or something with me. Maybe the Instagram logo, or twitter, or something else. Maybe multiple logos combined. I’m not sure. I think street art is really in right now.
Collins: I really like the idea of combining multiple logos. And I totally agree, street art is in right now.
Abodell: I’m just really glad you got banned from Instagram.
Richard Prince’s Instagram pieces are the exact idea that if something is posted onto the internet, someone will think that it is theirs for the taking. It’s what every parent warned about when the internet became more and more user friendly, and why typically parents, at least mine had, tried to keep me off of social media websites where I may have potentially willingly given up personal information. It’s a scary thought that Prince has and is continuing to get away with the theft of these users’ photos, including some users that are minors, which includes Acacia Brinley. It was a shock for me to see these pieces, and then to recognize a user that I follow today.
I think that by Prince not really knowing what he’s doing with these pieces, and never really giving a clear idea of what his statement is for the collection, he’s giving the viewer a free range to come up with an idea of what it is, or completely overthink it and make it seem ‘fake deep’. In my interview I tried to give the idea that while there will always be ways to create meaning for any art piece, the viewer may be misinformed or uninformed of where the piece had originated from. I believe that Prince himself is very misinformed in what Instagram actually is, and perhaps he was more involved in the idea of what tumblr is, as opposed to Instagram. He used the idea of ‘reblogging’ these photos when he was creating the show, but he wasn’t really doing so because he wasn’t fully giving credit to the original user who put the time into taking the photo, and perhaps another photographer was used as well that had not been credited.
I also think that he doesn’t fully understand the concept of copyright. While he seemingly comes off as a ‘rebel’, he really doesn’t understand that what he’s doing is stealing artwork from other artists, as the posts are photographs that the user took time to put into and create. He doesn’t truly alter the pieces like an artist like Andy Warhol had, yet he tries to constantly make a comparison and say that he’s a ‘modern day’ Warhol.
