French photojournalist Patrick Cariou spent six years in the 1990s living among Rastafarians in Jamaica and documenting their lifestyle. Cariou’s work was compiled in a book titled “Yes Rasta,” a collection of black and white portraits. Powerhouse Books Inc., an independent press in New York, published the book in 2000, producing only 7,000 copies. All told, Cariou earned $8,000 for his work.
While “Yes Rasta” enjoyed only modest commercial success, the photos got a second life in the art world. But it wasn’t one that Cariou ever expected. Pop artist Richard Prince used Cariou’s photography in a series of works called “Canal Zone.” Prince printed Cariou’s photographs on huge canvases and modified them. In one piece, Prince superimposed a cut out of an electric guitar into the hands of a Rastafarian man. In others, Prince covered Cariou’s subjects’ eyes and mouths with bright circles of paint, or dotted the landscapes with images of naked women.
