Appropriation artist Richard Prince used an image taken by photographer Eric McNatt to create a work as part of his New Portrait series displayed and sold at Gagosian Gallery in New York City and Blum & Poe in Tokyo. 

McNatt's Kim Gordon I was initially published alongside an interview of Kim Gordon in Paper (including the magazine's Instagram account and online), before being featured on Vogue.com as well as on McNatt's website and social media. Prince captured a screenshot of Kim Gordon I on Instagram, posted it to his Instagram, and commented three times before taking another screenshot to create Portrait of Kim Gordon. Prince's Portrait of Kim Gordon was featured in Blum & Poe's exhibition of New Portrait and in a gallery book of the exhibition. McNatt sued Prince and Blum & Poe for copyright infringement.

Prince and Blum & Poe filed a joint motion for summary judgment. McNatt requested summary judgment on the fair use issue. In light of the "parallel" facts and argument of this cases, the Southern District of New York analyzed Prince's fair use defense in this case and in Graham v. Prince et al. simultaneously and found that the balance of factors strongly favors against fair use and denied defendants’ motions for summary judgment. On the first factor, the court found that Prince's use of both images was not transformative as a matter of law and such use was "undisputedly commercial." In deciding whether the work's were transformative based on their "aesthetics and character," the court found that the Prince's changes to the images, namely enlarging, cropping, and adding an Instagram border and comments, are not sufficiently transformative because "the images remain unobstructed, unaltered but for being cropped, and unquestionably dominant." Rejecting defendants' contention that the reasonable observer has both a "general interest in, and appreciation of" art as without merit, the court found "a reasonable observer would likely identify Prince's alterations as (1) adding the Instagram frame and (2) showcasing his own comments." 

The court found the works' artistic purpose similarly deficient to support a finding of transformative use. Notwithstanding Prince's “inconsistent” description of his artistic purposes in his deposition testimony compared to his declaration, even if the court accepted that Prince’s works differed from the original images because his portraits are a critique of social media culture, such artistic intentions do not rise to the level of a satire or a parody of the original image. Prince himself admitted that for Portrait of Rastajay92, “he could have used any number of other photographs to feature in his series” demonstrating that the original image itself is not being commented on. 

The parties came to a settlement agreement memorialized in final judgments from the court. The final judgments find in favor of the plaintiffs, enjoin all defendants from selling, reproducing, or otherwise distributing the portraits and ancillary works (though do not require destruction), and order damages in the amount of five times the portraits’ prices.

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