There was more than just this single shot taken that day. THERE WERE MORE DEATH-DEFYING PHOTOS TAKEN THAT DAY. Taking place during the Depression, when 15 million people were looking for work, the image of an expanding city and the workforce behind it was a rare bright spot for the public to hang on to. “It seems pretty clear they were real workers, but the event was organised with a number of photographers." "The image was a publicity effort by the Rockefeller Center,” Johnston told the UK's Independent. No, 11 men eating lunch on a beam hanging 69 floors in the air was not an everyday sight, and the whole thing came together to publicize the construction of Rockefeller Center. IT WAS PURELY FOR PUBLICITY.Īlthough the image was meant to give a casual look into what a worker’s life was like high above the city streets, it was purely for publicity purposes. But other photographers were up there that day, too, including William Leftwich and Thomas Kelley, and so the Rockefeller archive and Corbis removed any official credit and attributed the photo to “unknown.”Īccording to Ken Johnston, who was the Historical Director of Photography at Corbis Images, until the 1950s it wasn’t out of the norm for photographers to not receive credit for their photos. Ebbets, who actually received credit for it for a while. One name that keeps coming up is Charles C. The image of these workers, dangling high above Midtown, may be etched in our memories (and on apartment walls, T-shirts, and refrigerator magnets) forever, but no one really knows who was responsible for taking the picture. THERE ARE STILL DOUBTS ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S IDENTITY. Here are 10 fascinating facts about Lunch Atop a Skyscraper. It’s been over eight decades since the image was printed in the New York Herald-Tribune on October 2, 1932, and it's been one of the most well-recognized pieces of photography ever since. It showed the world that New York City-and America as a whole-was still building, still progressing, and, most importantly, still working. The sight of 11 Rockefeller Center construction workers casually eating lunch across a beam hanging 850 feet in the air was a hopeful look at life in the '30s. But Lunch Atop a Skyscraper was different. Images of breadlines, derelict housing, and desperate mothers informed the cultural consciousness by bringing the Depression to newsstands across the United States. It is released by First Run Features.The Great Depression inspired some of the most memorable photographs of the 20th century by perfectly capturing the heartache and suffering of a nation out of work. Men At Lunch is currently playing at Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street (21, ). And there's no question that the photograph is a haunting one-even if it was just one big advertisement for Rockefeller Center. But history buffs will appreciate the long look back at the city's steel era, and there are some striking images of skyscrapers here, both classic and new. And Irish director O Cualain focuses a lot of attention on the workers who hailed from his native land, even tracking two potential iron workers in the photograph to origins in a small Irish village.Īt 78 minutes, the film is too long and too slow for its content, which would have been punchier at a half hour and benefitted from a more focused, linear narrative. Interviewees ponder the photograph's allure, debating the identity of the photographer-the photo has been credited to Charles Ebbetts at times, but there's been no official confirmation-and noting that many New Yorkers claim the mysterious everyman workers pictured are their own family members. The film, beautifully narrated by Irish actress Fionnula Flanagan, focuses on the trials and tribulations of New York's immigrant population in the '20s and '30s, many of whom were the steel and ironworkers responsible for anchoring skyscrapers like the RCA building, the under-construction subject of Lunch Atop A Skyscraper. Cualain digs into the history behind the Depression-era photograph, attempting to investigate the identities of the anonymous ironworkers and explain why the image has lingered so long in our city's historical canon. And in the new documentary Men at Lunch, director Sean O. Few images are more iconic to New York than Lunch Atop A Skyscraper, the September 1932 photograph of eleven iron workers eating lunch on a steel beam suspended above Rockefeller Center.
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