The true story of Labor Day’s most viral photo

Eleven workers sitting on a beam at the top of a skyscraper, at lunchtime, without any security. Behind them –250 meters lower– you can see, blurry, New York City. The image is shocking.

Because of the location in which it was captured and the beauty of its composition, as well as the quality of the negative and because it was taken without a tripod, in production conditions as difficult as those of the workers who served as models, it became an iconic photo Y one of the most famous in history.

For years specialists have wondered if this is not a photomontage, over time it has been proven not to be. If you’ve seen her once, it’s almost impossible to forget her.

After the crack

The stock market crash of 1929 had dragged the country into an unprecedented economic crisis, but three years later, very little by little, cities were starting to rebuild.

Spurred on by great fortunes, architectural masses were built like the rockefeller center -a set of 14 buildings- where this image was taken, and the Empire State Building, among others.

They got up too create jobsOne in ten New Yorkers were unemployed and those who did faced very demanding and even deplorable conditions.

The photo was taken on the 69th floor of the RCA building, and every year it goes viral by thousands of users on social networks: he is the most chosen to represent, on May 1, the Labor Day.

In the 1930s, New York soared to the sky with the pretension of becoming what it would end up being: an icon, of the might of the United States and the dreams and ambitions of its people.

Of course, this image came to the detriment of the thousands of workers who worked to be able to eat, in exchange for mediocre wages and often shameful working conditions.

During these years, more than 400 workers have died in less than a decade: mainly immigrants, who accused a dollar and a half hour. The image therefore also represents in its own way the precarious working conditions of the time.

It is also said that at that time unemployment had taken such a toll that below those climbing the towers there were hundreds or thousands of unemployed people waiting for someone to fall to take their place. .

Another fact: it has been statistically proven that every ten floors built, a worker died. They had a motto: “We are not dying, they are killing us”. A rule of thumb they had up there was “don’t look down.”

The snapshot was first published on October 2, 1932, in the Sunday supplement of the New York Herald Tribune, no signature. No one imagined then that it would become one of the most famous photos in history.

It was awarded to two photographers, but it was ultimately proven that he had made them Charles Ebbets, for a series called fear of heightsAlthough on the day of the shooting, there was another artist who had taken photos in the Empire State Building and who at one point was believed to have been the perpetrator.

Ebbets passed away in 1978 and never learned of the unprecedented success his photo would eventually have in the age of social media.

The image has become so famous that there is even a documentary, Men at lunch, by Irish brothers Eamonn and Sean O’Cualain, who tells their story. There are also those who find it a resemblance to The last meal, rethe great Leonardo da Vinci.

package