The most interesting image is of three women. The main focus is the woman on one knee. She is dressed in a fishnet jumpsuit, looking directly into the camera lens, a lit cigarette in her left hand.
Underneath her a prone woman, naked, lying face down. She lies upon a fur coat, beneath her hips.
Next to her, a fully clothed woman, holding a permanent marker. On the nape of the naked woman's neck, extending to her delicate right shoulder, is a completed game of Tic-Tac-Toe, drawn on her skin with the aforementioned marker.
There are other doodles on her; two hearts, one on her right cheek, the other on her shoulder. A line extending from a nearly-obscured drawing at her mid-back bisects her along her spine, ending just where the lumbar curves upwards into the top of her buttocks.
"What the f--k is this," I asked, before realizing that the fishnet-bodystocking woman is Lindsay Lohan.
The photo is part of an 8-shot portfolio, created for Germany's Max Magazine. The cover shot is of a seated Lohan, hair pulled back, eyes overly-made up with dark liner, her left breast exposed.
Lohan, and all her bullsh-t drug addiction drama makes the photos difficult to view. One might think that the photos are a strategic attempt to wag Lohan's drama-dog, which is misguided. No one is as interested in watching Lohan revamp her image as they are in watching her destroy it: Perhaps she's cried wolf too many times, but there is no satisfaction in watching her straighten herself out, even if you root for her to stop f--king herself up on a humanistic level.
Sadly, it is this that makes these photo completely unsatisfying. When a celebrity shrugs off 21st century conservative sociology, and allows her nude body to be exposed to the voyeurs in all of us, the sexiness of a given photo is magnified by the titillating naughtiness of the act.
Not so for Lindsay, however.
Instead, looking at Lohan naked form, attractive as it might be, is uncomfortable; no different than watching a bombing comic use more profanity to save their set, or watching a heroic sports figure play two seasons past when they should have retired. The titillation is replaced with superficial revulsion, served on a bed of abject pity.
Lohan should not stop doing exactly what she is doing, image-wise. And I am probably completely wrong to feel pity. Contempt is probably more appropriate. Celebrities probably don't deserve sympathy, and it doesn't do them a damned bit of good if we do: The best position to adopt, to protect us from them, is that they should remain tools who sold their souls for fame and fortune, and our pity makes the true root cause. Our lives are shittier than theirs and we're bitter that they don't cherish their good fortune as much as we fantasize we would, given equal circumstances.
Perhaps she will be judged differently in retrospect, but, now, there is no reason to seek out the Max Magazine photos; they are more pitiable than they are exciting.
