I doubt they’d do that. Many people of that era had superstitions about thirteen people eating together. It portends a death. My grandmother, for example; she’d walk away from the table if there’d be exactly thirteen sitting at any moment.
Of course, she was a Midwestern Christian. I don’t know the what the traditions of these guys would be, but if I had to make a guess, I think they’d be more superstitious, rather than less.
Every time I watch this I nearly faint. . . . " QUOTE]
No shit. It’s amazing how one can get the sensation of vertigo sitting safely at a desk and viewing it on an average computer monitor. I had to turn it off before it was even finished.
Re the OP, I have always loved this photo and bought a large print of it for my bf (he’s in construction, though not like that!). It never occurred to me that it was staged or that there is some kind of photo trickery going on. I distinctly remember footage of the ESB being built and it showed any number of scenes with men on beams like in the picture. Was that manipulated also? Kind of disappointing but I still find the image stunning.
Sounds like professional jealousy - “we’re tougher than those pussies, they had a floor.” I mean, they were all real high steel workers, and really high up. How does having them sit on a beam in a posed photo diminish that?
If you just cropped the bottom a little to remove the planks beneath it would look a lot more bad-ass. There’s a floor ten feet below them. But if you fell off the beam you might not hit that floor, depending on how you fell. Yeah, don’t fall off.
It is staged, because how else could it be? The guys who worked those jobs didn’t all sit on beams like that regularly to have lunch, and a passing photographer happened upon them and decided to take a snapshot. It’s a posed picture. But those guys really are construction workers who really are sitting on a beam hundreds of feet in the air. Those guys really did walk out on that beam, sit down, and pretend to have lunch. It is a genuine photo of something that really happened, even though the reason it happened is so that there could be a photo of it. That’s like arguing that the moon landings were staged, because they made sure to take plenty of pictures of Neil Armstrong bouncing around. Yes, he posed for those pictures on the moon, and the pictures were the point of the trip. But it’s confusing to say the photo was “staged”, since another meaning of “staged” would mean it happened in front of a painted backdrop or something.
There’s a theater in Madrid called Circo Price, which used to be a circus. There are pictures of some of their first performers. Acrobats and tightorpe walkers in formal clothing :eek: I had read that Pinito del Oro’s clothing (basically what we’re used to seeing on trapeze ladies) had caused an enormous scandal, but until I saw her picture side by side with all those dudes in tails I hadn’t understood why!
Tell me about it! WTF is wrong with these people? I would kill my son if he pulled a, er, stunt like that.
At the same time, I do enjoy those “flying squirrel” type videos, and don’t feel horrified by them in anything like the same way. Which probably doesn’t make sense actuarially speaking…