Choire Sicha wrote about his friend Eric McNatt, who sued Richard Prince for copyright infringement after Prince used McNatt’s photo of Kim Gordon—which he shot for Paper Magazine, which paid him $100—for Prince’s own Instagram portrait of Gordon.
As Choire put it so well, “Everyone involved here is still an outsider punk kid in their own mind.” Well, as it turns out, when the settlement was announced, I realized a friend of mine from way back in the day was McNatt’s litigator from Cravath, and I don’t think he has ever thought of himself as an outsider punk kid, then or now.
But Choire’s point observation is still useful, because some outsider punk kids in their own minds still hustle to survive, making $100 for licensing their now-famous photo a second time, and other outsider punk kids in their own mind testify in their depositions to making $45 million a year. So it really is the little differences
The Portrait of Kim Gordon | Why Eric McNatt Sued Richard Prince [vulture]