Lunch atop a Skyscraper

 

This photograph calls "Lunch atop a Skyscraper" and it was taken by Charles Ebbets on september 20, 1932. The photograph shows a group of 11 workers seated on a girder with their feet dangling 256 meters, on the 69th floor! above the New York City streets. They are having lunch during the construction of the RCA building at Rockefeller Center.

The men haven't any security. They don't have safety harness. They are seated like if were in the dinner room of their house. This picture was taken during the Great Depression, a time when people were willing to take any job regardless of safety issue.

The photographer

Charles Ebbets was born in August 18, 1905 in Gadsden, Alabama. He bought his first camera at the age of eight by charging it to his mother's account at a local drugstore. Ebbets started his career during the 1920s in St. Petersburg, Florida, as a still photographer.

By the 1930s Ebbets was a well known photographer and had work published in the major newspapers across the nation including the New York Times. In 1932, he was appointed photographic director for the Rockefeller Center, which was under construction in New York. In September of that year, he would take the photo which would later define his work, Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper. This picture appeared in the Sunday photo supplement of the New York Herald Tribune on October 2. 

I really like this photo because you can see the buildings of New York behind the workers and it's really awesome how they can be so relax at such a high height. In fact, it causes me a little of vertigo. The other thing that I like, it's that they look like if were floating, because the photograph doesn't show the entire girder. Although I like that the picture is in black and white, maybe if was in color, the details could be more appreciated.