To mark the 25th anniversary of Getty Images, gettyarchive introduces key images from across its historic collections.
With twenty million images as competition, that this 1932 photograph is the most famous within the Bettmann Archive is tribute to its place in the popular imagination.
Captured during construction of New York's Rockefeller Centre, workmen perch atop the 70-story RCA building, taking their lunch on a beam that slices across the city below.
Unfazed and convivial in their overalls, at the top of the world, the men have come to represent the spirit of the American worker, and the skywards trajectory of steel, glass and industry.
Part of a publicity shoot, the identity of the photographer remains disputed, with many cameramen present on the day. Images in the series show the obliging workmen at work, play and rest, even napping on the same steel girder.
German curator Otto Bettmann was to arrive in New York just a few years later, in 1935. Today's gettyarchive Story d...
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