The first to photograph the first man in space With Yuri Gagarin. 1961
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In May 1961, I was summoned to the editorial office. “Pack your case at once; you are flying south. They’ll explain the mission to you on the plane. It’s an important one.” There were five of us at the airport: correspondents from Pravda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Krasnaya Zvezda and myself, representing APN. We boarded an Il-14 plane and were told that we were flying to meet Yuri Gagarin. We were brought to the Sochi sanatorium where Yuri was resting. Journalists started asking him questions and I took pictures. Some people in track suits were milling around – it turned out they were future cosmonauts. Our session was soon cut short, however, and the film was taken away from us. We were furious. A stranger in an open-necked shirt approached us. He heard our “rantings” and smiled. “The journalists were brought here by decision of the Party Central Committee”, he told the guards. “Give them back the film, and God forbid you to lose any of them, they answer for them with their heads.” Our saviour turned out to be Sergei Korolyov, the spacecraft Chief Designer. In the morning, my colleagues flew away to Moscow. I was left alone. I went for a walk and saw Gagarin sitting on a bench. “Take your pictures quickly”, he said, “the medical people may be here any minute and there will be no more photographs”. I took several snaps of Gagarin in his holiday hat. It taught me a lesson: the main thing in my profession is always to have my camera with me. Yuri emerged from the meeting with the doctors with his head bandaged. I did not ask him any questions but started taking snap shops at once. This is the story of the photograph of the cosmonaut with his head bandaged near the ZIS 110 limousine. I managed to be photographed together with him. On my return to Moscow, I surrendered all the undeveloped negatives to the secret First Department. The most interesting shots with Gagarin and future cosmonauts were not returned to me. It was only several years later that I got some of them back. Looking through my archive in 2004, I decided to put them on public view for the first time. The Soviet-made DS-2 colour film and A-2 black and white film had decayed over time but computer processing saved the photographs. It is amazing that Gagarin’s famous smile looks as if it were photographed just yesterday.