I've not heard of Richard Prince, but some of the court cases around image copyright do get thrown out if the photographer cannot demonstrate a loss, especially if it's something small, like an attribution error.

I've had a quick look to see what Richard Prince did. Looks like he uses the 'fair use' argument a lot. This requires a thorough understanding of fair use, which is a hugely disputed area, and does end up in court a lot for that very reason. For the judge to decide.

Mostly, fair use applies to reporting on an incident or person where you need a photo of the incident or person for the report. He seems to have argued 'fair use' for different reasons and I'm not sure how much he wins these cases or on what basis he thinks it's 'fair use', when for artwork, he could have just applied for a licence, which probably would have been cheaper than a court case.

Either way, respecting a photographer's copyright is the better approach if you don't want to go to court. In my opinion, anyway.

People will do what people will do. That's why we have a judicial system to thrash it out.

And the fact that I've been able to look up the court cases online, I think, proves my point. 'No, manipulating an image does not protect you from copyright lawsuits'.