viz.

Image Credit: BBC News

Only a scant 23 days elapsed after TMZ leaked nude photos of Prince Harry that French tabloid Closer printed images of Kate Middleton sunbathing topless on the balcony of a Provence guesthouse. In addition to the frenzied speculation about the photos themselves (Is the queen upset with her grandson? Was Middleton truly in private, since she was photographed on a terrace? Are there more images that will emerge?) it’s interesting to note that the press itself has been the subject of equal amounts of scrutiny.

This photo of Adrien Grenier had me totally pegged as I perused celebrity blog perezhilton.com in an effort not to do any of my real work.

But I really like the idea of a celebrity sending a message back to us, observing what we are doing at that very moment in such a completely accurate way while we try (or maybe Perez Hilton tries) to describe and make judgments about what he's up to.

I'm reminded of those shirts Britney Spears used to wear, in that those were sort of an anticipation of what the viewer was thinking about her, instead of about what, in this case, the viewer is doing.

In both of these cases there's a weird fusion of watching, making judgments, and sending messages that make reciprocal judgments all in one image.