About

Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Olena Zelenska's Vogue Photoshoot is a photography series that was done by Vogue magazine in late July 2022 in Ukraine, which featured images of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his wife Olena Zelenska (the First Lady) while talking about her role in the war and how it's affected her. After the photos were released alongside the article, the photoshoot sparked controversy among some who felt it was ostentatious or inappropriate given the context of the ongoing 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine while others defended them. Several of the pictures were also used as exploitables in memes shortly after.

History

On July 26th, 2022, a Vogue article and photoshoot were uploaded with the theme focused on Ukraine's First Lady and Volodymyr Zelenskyy's wife, Olena Zelenska, and how she had been affected and decided to impact the Russia-Ukraine War. As part of the article, there were multiple photos taken of the couple, with one scene being at the site of combat wreckage and people dressed as soldiers posed for a picture. Vogue tweeted^[5] the magazine cover featuring Zelenska on July 26th, receiving over 2,500 likes, 520 retweets and 570 quote retweets in 28 hours (seen below).

The images were particularly singled out as major takeaways from the article, with the most viral photo being of Zelenskyy and his wife Olena sitting together embracing each other, as shared by Twitter^[1] user @ThisIsMax on July 26th, receiving over 100 likes in 27 hours (shown below).

Online Reaction

Almost immediately after Vogue released the images on July 26th, 2022, people began to react to them on social media, with many appearing upset by the photoshoot. Due to Zelenskyy's wide media approach, he recently was a guest on Piers Morgan's program, leading to the Twitter account @TurnOffYourTvN1^[2] to create a meme in which Zelenskyy was photoshopped embracing Piers Morgan, who is shirtless and wearing a Burger King necklace, instead of his wife, gaining over 200 likes in one day (shown below).

That same day, behind-the-scenes footage of the photoshoot was also released. The BTS footage showed how the shots were taken and depicted Zelenskyy laughing and talking back and forth with the Vogue crew. The Twitter account @Levi_godman^[3] tweeted the footage while adding text showing his disapproval of Zelenskyy's decision to have a Vogue photoshoot, which was liked over 25,000 times and watched over 1.5 million times in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Massive amount of ukrainian soldiers dying every day, Zelensky : lets have a vogue shooting pic.twitter.com/BrNPYKZYR6

— Levi (@Levi_godman) July 26, 2022

Another photo of Zelenskyy and his wife sitting down apart from each other but with their hands touching was used as part of a Fake News Headline meme with different captions about the Vogue photoshoot being added, such as the example tweeted by Twitter user @nicktothecore74^[4] on July 27th, 2022, which accumulated over 40 likes in 24 hours (shown below).

Various Reactions

Search Interest

External References