Chief Designer (2022) Luke Ryan. Self Published. 22cm x 16.5cm. 108 Pages

Chief Designer (2022)
22cm x 16.5cm
108 pages
Softcover
Handbound Swiss Bound book

I began work on this project in 2021, before the February 24th invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation. My research on space travel led me to the complex history of Ukrainian astronautical engineer, Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov, who headed up the Soviet space programme in the 1950s and 1960s. His Ukrainian identity was consistently obscured, and he was known by the anonymous appellation, ‘Chief Designer’. His full identity was revealed only after his death in 1966. Using cyanotypes and declassified documents I trace Korolyov’s life to produce an alternative, visual biography.