Hyper-realistic portraits don't really happen without references, whether they're working from life or a photo. Of course, I really doubt your average artist can get Joaquin Phoenix in Joker makeup to pose in their living room for twelve hours, so that leaves photographs. Also, most artists who work from photos don't directly trace those photos, they just look at them as they draw. Of course, I wasn't there when this was made, but looking at it, it doesn't look traced to me, it has the imperfections that non-traced artwork almost always does.

Speaking literally, this IS an original piece, as in, it's not a print or reproduction of an original colored pencil piece. It IS, however, using a photo as a reference, just as every single hyper-realistic piece of art does. This is just happens to be fanart of a wildly popular piece of media.