Yuri Gagarin, the Russian pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space, died at just 34 years old on March 27, in 1968. Karsh photographed Gagarin during a two-month trip to Moscow in 1963, in the course of which he photographed many subjects, not least of all Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Leonid Brezhnev, and ballet dancer Maya Plisetskaya.