The power of the Trump-Putin presidential photo op.

Europe|The power of the Trump-Putin presidential photo op.

In the end there was no deal, but there was a photo op: a dramatic, well-choreographed image of President Trump not just welcoming President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to Alaska on Friday, but rolling out the red carpet, that now-universal symbol of fame, pageantry and pomp.

The two men clasped hands, and then strode to Mr. Trump’s limo, in complementary dark suits — single-breasted, two-button — matching white shirts and coordinating ties (red for Mr. Trump, burgundy for Mr. Putin), giving the impression of kindred spirits: just two statesmen meeting on the semi-neutral ground of an airport tarmac to go talk cease-fire, their respective planes looming in the background.

That’s the picture that was caught by the waiting cameras, and those are the photos that have gone around the world to accompany reports of the nonproductive meeting.

In the absence of an actual resolution to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they have become the takeaway. And that, said both President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, even before the meeting, was Mr. Putin’s goal in the first place.

“He is seeking, excuse me, photos,” Mr. Zelensky said. “He needs a photo from the meeting with President Trump.”

Why? Because whatever happened afterward, a photo could be publicly seen — and read — as an implicit endorsement.

After all, the Russian president has been a virtual pariah in the West since his full-scale invasion of Ukraine; accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Whether or not Mr. Trump was tough with him behind the closed doors of their meeting room — whether or not their talks were, as Mr. Trump later said, “productive” — what has now been preserved for posterity is Mr. Putin’s admission back into the fold.

And of all current world leaders, the only one who understands, and embraces, the power of the image quite as effectively as Mr. Trump is Mr. Putin. Both men have made themselves into caricatures through costume and scenography, the better to capture the popular imagination.

Mr. Trump has done it with his MAGA merch, his red-white-and-blue dressing (the one regularly adopted by members of his cabinet as well as Republicans in Congress), his hair and his showmanship.

Mr. Putin has done it with his orchestrated photo shoots: the ones that capture him braving the snow in Siberia, hugging a polar bear, hunting shirtless. They may look silly (at least from outside) but that doesn’t make them any less effective. Or headline-grabbing.

That Mr. Putin met Mr. Trump in the uniform Mr. Trump embraces made its own kind of statement. The conflict in Ukraine has been in part a battle fought in images for the support of the global imagination; that is why Mr. Zelensky insists on dressing to show solidarity with his fighting forces whenever he speaks to international bodies, be they Congress or the European Union; why his wife posed for the cover of Vogue.

By wearing his suit and tie in Alaska, Mr. Putin cast himself as Mr. Trump’s equal and drew another line between himself and Mr. Zelensky, who famously offended Mr. Trump by wearing his army look to the White House

Their handshake — which went on for a while and also involved various friendly pats — was a pantomime of acceptance of that idea. And the photo was everyone’s souvenir.