There are photo shoots, there are presidential photo shoots – and then there are presidential photo shoots by Vladimir Putin. Rarely has the leader of a global power embraced advertising staged yet with such a creative but cliché fervor, not only fueling the global desire for a caricature of himself, but in fact creating it.
Cue, for example, his latest propaganda push, released by the Kremlin, as bilateral relations with the United States become icy and with Putin’s description of Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny as a “Vladimir, the poisoner in underwear “still reverberating through the air.
In a series of photos of Putin on a weekend excursion to the snowy Siberian taiga, the 68-year-old president is shown in his favorite outdoor setting, displaying his connection to nature, manly stamina and appreciation for the country. In the vastness of the largely empty landscape, it looms. At least, that was probably the idea.
He is, to be more specific, caught – as if by chance! – looking serious and steel at the wheel of an all-terrain vehicle covered in camouflage, so gigantic that it seems that nothing can stop it; posing knee-deep in a pile of snow while wearing a plush yet cozy sheepskin jacket, matching pants and an ivory olympic turtleneck and looking penetratingly into the future; sailing calmly across a fragile bridge over a frozen river with his defense minister, Sergei Shoygu, just behind; and then enjoying a stimulating open-air picnic of sausages and crudites with Mr. Shoygu (who is wearing matching clothes) at a table covered in a white cloth, fur blankets thrown over the benches and metal mugs raised in harmony .
Cold? It’s cold?
Most political leaders prefer sanctioned photos of themselves looking serious and working hard in the office. President Obama, for example, used to pose behind his desk and with his sleeves rolled up. President Emmanuel Macron, from France, released a famous video on the “making of” of his official portrait, portraying himself carefully by arranging various symbolic accessories on his table.
But Putin has always taken a different approach. One who emphasizes the physical rather than the push-and-pull of paper, and talks about old stereotypes of virility, strength and machismo. Not to mention good health. The kind that allows you to stay in the job for a long time.
It has become a kind of absurd art form in itself.
He was photographed, for example, in similar sheepskin clothing in 2010 – albeit without a fur hat and matching gloves – riding through the Siberian snow and on a trip to the Russian Arctic, hugging a polar bear. He rode a motorcycle in black leather (a photo that was so successful, a British company, Matchless London, christened a jacket in his honor), played ice hockey (scoring a lot of goals) and worked out with the Russian judo team.
This action-man frame reached its zenith in 2017, when Putin was photographed almost entirely bare-chested while hunting, harpooned and other male outdoor activities in Siberia. Then he was caught basking shirtless in the sun, his eyes hidden by black shadows.
“How could you not vote for a torso like that?” a Moscow newspaper asked at the time. It probably just seemed like a rhetorical question.
In 2019, Putin spun his image creation to photos that reference his attachment to the land, rather than his mastery of it, posing sitting peacefully in a field holding a bouquet of wildflowers that he presumably chose, or reclining on a cliff-topped tor. . Even so, he remained dressed in shades of olive green and silhouettes that resemble uniforms. The implicit message was still difficult. It was just more about hard love.
The new photos from Siberia follow this tradition. If they are not exactly subtle – in fact, the creation of images is so obvious that it inspired a good deal of ridicule and memes on social media – it is also true that, when it comes to Putin, subtlety was never part of the o … well, image.