Everything we have learned from the current governments can be summed up in a single lesson: if you make people believe that things are going great, then the country will have hope and will struggle to maintain the apparent wellbeing that both, rulers and the media, are in charge of promoting. Perhaps now it is not so easy because there are alternative sources that constantly inform us about the current situation in our cities or states. However, by the 1930s, all information could be found in newspapers and radio only. This is the story of ‘Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,’ one of the most iconic photos in history and the setting is the equally famous New York City.
Print media was a great opportunity for many businessmen and politicians to vindicate themselves in the eyes of people who thought of them as thieves, greedy or avaricious figures. Through paid articles and legendary photographs such as “Lunch atop a skyscraper”, these men demonstrated that, beyond their power and their desire to get rich, they were there to help thousands of families have a chance to get on their feet.
For years, the photograph of eleven men taking their lunch suspended on a huge steel beam has been attributed to Charles Ebbets, however, when it was discovered that he was not the real author of this powerful image, which we usually see on the eve of Labor Day, a series of secrets and facts were uncovered that -beyond showing it as an inspiring picture- turned it into one of the best-hidden advertising games of the twentieth century.
On September 20 1932, a group of photographers and journalists were assembled at the construction site of the RCA Building – now the Comcast Building – for a photo shoot as part of an advertising campaign for Rockefeller Center in New York. There is no doubt that the men sitting on the beam were builders; we do not know whether they were hungry or not, just as we do not know whose miraculous shot sent this group of workers straight into eternity.
The Corbis agency, responsible for having sent the photographers to the RCA, assures that it has tried to find the protagonists of the shot; because of the almost 2 million images they keep in their archive, this is a real best-seller that is not even surpassed by the photographs of Einstein or Luther King Jr. that they have. For this reason, 15 years ago, the agency hired a group of private investigators to find these workers, although they only managed to obtain a few names.
Almost eighty-six years after its appearance, this image is still a sensation, perhaps its protagonists took a break from the long journey we call life, without even knowing that they were something like rockstars in the photo. However, they may have lived to see that their work, beyond being reflected in the enormous RCA in New York, was manifested in the enormous growth of the United States, because what for them was lunchtime, for the country was a sign of the strength and courage of its men whose efforts were worth going forward.
This story was originally published in Spanish by Cultura Colectiva.
