I’ve always had a fascination with the days of Space Race. I find it so incredibly interesting that this boom in technology eventually lead to humanity landing on the Moon.

With the 60th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight to the stars in 2021, I wanted to create a short project based on it. I decided to depict the Vostok 1 launch, beginning in the vastness of space then traveling to the cramped Soviet bunker then back to the bright sprawling sky. The contrast between these two locations is so dramatic and the more secretive nature of the Soviet space program lent itself to some cool and fun shots.

The audio is archival radio recordings between mission control and Yuri Gagarin in the first few minutes of the launch.

Check out the art direction I did for this project here!