On October 12, 2025, photos released in Los Angeles, Pacific Daylight Time (PDT), and in London, United Kingdom time (UK time), according to TMZ and the Daily Mail, show Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau embracing and kissing on the artist’s yacht, off the coast of Santa Barbara. Regarding Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau, this column examines how such a moment becomes a public affair: circuits of attention, rules of privacy, and mechanisms that propel the image.
How a photo becomes a story
On the sea, nothing but elements. A hull, two silhouettes, a bright sun. In the memory of platforms, it’s a nugget. The image has everything it needs: a recognizable place, known characters, a universal gesture. It aggregates, duplicates, comments. Around Katy Perry and Justin Trudeau, it becomes a quick novel. The threads weave themselves: a dinner in the north, a concert in the center, a boat in the south. The montage gives the illusion of continuity. The mind fills in the blanks. The machine has found its fuel.
Mediology teaches us: the medium has its moods, and the message takes on their color. Régis Debray calls this an economy of transmission. The videosphere has replaced old sheets. Short time governs belief. Here, the device proves itself: a telephoto lens, prompt servers, news feeds that push the image to everyone. Reality contracts and becomes plausible evidence. Seeing, suddenly, almost equates to knowing.
The economy that ignites
A scholar had said it before the digital dawn. Herbert A. Simon explained that the abundance of information devours the only wealth that matters: human attention — a principle formulated as early as 1971 in his essay Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World.
In this theater, newsrooms are forced to choose: run or watch. Running means publishing quickly, paraphrasing, titling broadly. Watching means verifying, contextualizing, recalling the law, enduring the frustration of not showing everything. Public interest does not equate to the interest of the public. The former pertains to common reason. The latter, to curiosity that flares up.
The law that sets the sails straight
The story must now pass through the court of rules. In France, Article 9 of the Civil Code states that everyone has the right to respect for their private life; it allows the judge to prevent or stop the infringement.
In Canada, the Supreme Court rendered a judgment in the case Aubry v. Éditions Vice-Versa (1998). It ruled that disseminating the identifiable image of a person without proven public interest can violate privacy.
In California, the so-called anti-paparazzi legislation (California Civil Code § 1708.8) penalizes the intrusive capture of "impressions" of private life, especially in a family or personal setting.
These regimes do not say the same thing, but they sing the same refrain: public interest is a threshold, not a pretext. There must be an obvious link with a responsibility, a collective risk, a manifest contradiction between saying and doing. Failing that, the image remains a clue and the story stays at the door.
What the image does to belief
We would like to believe that proof lies in rigor. On our screens, it often hides in liveliness. A photo imposes itself faster than a demonstration. It’s the mysterious agreement of the gaze and the interface. The first certainty slips in here: what we see is not always what is. The second follows immediately: visibility does not imply truthfulness. The age of perfect fakes demands safeguards. Metadata, concordant series, luminous coherence: we must relearn slowness. Doubt is not an obstacle, it’s a beacon.
Background portraits: two icons, two registers
Katy Perry knows the fevered stages, the self-mockery that disarms, the causes that unite. Her brand is expressed in bold color and calculated playfulness. In the public sphere, she navigates with the ease of a captain. The Californian episode offers her a less controlled mirror: fame is revealed without its discourse, and we measure how much an image can redraw a familiar silhouette.
Justin Trudeau has long shaped a political imagination where pedagogy smiles and symbols serve as invitations. Eight years of power forge habits of exposure. Here, the scene is no longer official. The register changes, perception follows. The sympathy capital can rebound. Criticism is ready too: too much style, not enough reserve. The verdict, in reality, belongs neither to fans nor adversaries. However, it depends on the measure put into the commentary.
The civic pendulum: informing without stripping
The freedom to inform is not a sword capable of cutting everything. It’s a compass. Warren and Brandeis foresaw the rise of intrusions in the era of rapid innovations, in their article ‘The Right to Privacy’ published in 1890 in the Harvard Law Review.
In practice, this means one simple thing: we describe without republishing, as long as rights remain uncertain and public interest is not established. We connect dates, places, sources. We explain the rules, we distinguish the civic from the spectacular. It’s a ridge line. It’s also a choice.
Final stop: bringing attention safely home
This detour through theory, law, and economy was not a whim, but public hygiene. Returning attention to the reader means refusing to let the algorithm dictate importance. An image ignites the imagination; it should not lead the investigation. Let’s hold the line: establish the facts, unfold the context, preserve the intimate part as long as public interest is not demonstrated. Thus, the story of others remains their story, and ours remains an enlightened conversation, sheltered from the clamor.