Lunch: a close-up of a famed photo of ironworkers.

[Mindful]

Director Sean O Cualain's PBS-like documentary exploration of 'Lunch Atop a Skyscraper' proves inconclusive, but it boldly reframes the photograph as a record of Irish immigrants.


An iconic 1932 photo of construction workers eating their lunches atop… (Corbis / First Run Features )Eleven men, sun-dried and weary but relaxed as peacocks, roost on a steel beam seemingly miles above Manhattan. Captured in the 1932 photo "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper," they evoke masculine bravery and foolhardiness, the Babel-esque ambitions and lax work regulations of a bygone era, and the hazards of attaining the American dream.

Director Seán Ó Cualáin's PBS-like documentary "Men at Lunch" strays far from the glamour and slickness associated with 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the building those ironworkers helped construct. Through an earnest narration by Fionnula Flanagan and slow zooms into the photograph, the film investigates several questions surrounding the image: its authenticity, its appeal and the identities of its creator and subjects.


http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/03/entertainment/la-et-mn-men-at-lunch-reviewY

 

[DOTR]

those days when men were men...and women were glad of it.

 

[Mindful]

I've just been watching the PBS documentary.

They traced some of those guys back to the small Irish village, before they emigrated to the USA.

 

[Marion Morrison]

OSHA would not approve.

 

[Mindful]

OSHA would not approve.

Who?

 

[Marion Morrison]

OSHA would not approve.

Who?

Home | Occupational Safety and Health Administration

They like to regulate everything.

I already know now, they'd require every one of those men to be wearing a breakaway harness.

 

[Mindful]

OSHA would not approve.

Who?

Home | Occupational Safety and Health Administration

They like to regulate everything.

I already know now, they'd require every one of those men to be wearing a breakaway harness.

Oh right.

They wouldn't, nowadays.

I get weak legs just looking at that photo.

 

[Disir]

OSHA would not approve.

Who?

Home | Occupational Safety and Health Administration

They like to regulate everything.

I already know now, they'd require every one of those men to be wearing a breakaway harness.

Ya, but animals were more important than humans back then. Still are to an extent.

 

[karpenter]

That Photo Was Staged
And Over-Layed On The Sky-Line

Still It Paints More Words
Than An Andy Whorall

Here's The Desecration
That Made Him 'Visionary'
The Rocky Horror Marilyn:

 

[Windparadox]

`
That photograph was allegedly staged. source: Lunch atop a Skyscraper - Wikipedia
`