Opinion of the Court
the user (or the subjective interpretation of a court) determine the purpose of the use. But the meaning of a secondary work, as reasonably can be perceived, should be considered to the extent necessary to determine whether the purpose of the use is distinct from the original, for instance, because the use comments on, criticizes, or provides otherwise unavailable information about the original, see, e.g., Authors Guild, 804 F. 3d, at 215–216.
2
The District Court determined that “[t]he Prince Series works can reasonably be perceived to have transformed Prince from a vulnerable, uncomfortable person to an iconic, larger-than-life figure.” 382 F. Supp. 3d, at 326. To make that determination, the District Court relied, in part, on testimony by Goldsmith that her photographs of Prince show that he “is ‘not a comfortable person’ and that he is ‘a vulnerable human being.’ ” Ibid. An expert on Warhol, meanwhile, testified that the Prince Series works depict “Prince as a kind of icon or totem of something,” a “masklike simulacrum of his actual existence.” 1 App. 249, 257.
The Court of Appeals noted, correctly, that “whether a work is transformative cannot turn merely on the stated or perceived intent of the artist or the meaning or impression that a critic—or for that matter, a judge—draws from the work.” 11 F. 4th, at 41. “[O]therwise, the law may well
Critical History 287 (S. Madoff ed. 1997), with R. Hughes, The Shock of the New 346–351 (2d ed. 1991). Whatever the contribution of Orange Prince, Goldsmith’s photograph is part of that contribution. A court need not, indeed should not, assess the relative worth of two works to decide a claim of fair use. Otherwise, “some works of genius would be sure to miss appreciation,” and, “[a]t the other end, copyright would be denied to [works] which appealed to a public less educated than the judge.” Bleistein, 188 U. S., at 251–252 (Holmes, J.). That Goldsmith’s photograph “had [its] worth and [its] success is sufficiently shown by the desire to reproduce [it] without regard to [her] rights.” Id., at 252.
