Richard Prince, (born 1949 in the Panama Canal Zone) is a American painter and photographer. Trained as a figure painter, Prince began creating collages containing photographs in 1975. His works have often been the subject of debates within the art world.

Starting in 1977, Prince created controversy by re-photographing four photographs previously appearing in the New York Times. Within the art world, this became part of a major discussion concerning authorship and authenticity of photographic images, as well as photographic copyright issues. This continued into 1983, when his work Spiritual America, featuring a photo of Brooke Shields, then age ten, standing in the bathtub, as an allusion to precocious sexuality and to the Alfred Stieglitz photograph by the same name. The display of this image led to a lawsuit with Shields' mother as well as the original photographer, and led to further discussion within the art community, concerning the role of voyeurism within photography. His Jokes series (beginning 1986) concerns the sexual fantasies and sexual frustrations of middle-class America, using traditional humour, including stand-up comedy and burlesque humour.