![]() ![]() Then entered the speakers at the ceremony, and the music lowered as they stepped onto the stage. Glancing around the space, eyes expressed excitement as people chatted and took footage on their smartphones. ![]() Music began pumping as DJ Jenna G was providing all the tunes to get everyone excited for Co-op Live’s topping out ceremony - an age-old ceremony where the final beam or piece of a roof is placed on a building, marking a milestone.Īttendees were invited to sign the final acoustically treated roof cassette, lifted into place to top out the structure, with their signatures becoming part of the permanent structure. We walked through pathways marked out for us to enter the enormous concrete and steel shell of a structure, towering over our heads.Ĭrowds of media organisations gathered in the centre of what will be the main arena hall, and construction workers sat in the surrounding stands, the scale of the place was beginning to sink in. The area was busy and there was already an energy about the place. We entered the half-building site situated by the home of Manchester City, passing rows of construction workers all dressed in hi-vis jackets, protective hats and boots - and noticing various Northern accents being spoken. Invited as first guests for a sneaky look on a rainy Wednesday afternoon (5th July), we pulled up next to Etihad Stadium to notice another gigantic structure appear from behind it in the background, in the form of an enormous dark box - the new £365 million Co-op Live music arena, opening in April 2024. The photograph is part of Corbis’ prestigious Bettmann Archive.We took a trip over to East Manchester for an exclusive sneak peek at how the city’s massive new music and entertainment arena Co-op Live is coming along. The notes have been prepared based on conversations with Seán Ó Cualáin and Ken Johnston, director of historical photography at Corbis. They turned up three possible photographers and, for the first time ever, unquestionably identified two of the men on the beam.Ĭlick on the highlighted portions of the famous photograph, below, to learn more about its long-held secrets. In the process, the Ó Cualáin brothers confirmed that the photograph is real, and not a darkroom trick, as has been speculated. The filmmakers’ curiosity led them on a journey from the supposed relatives of a couple of the men pictured to the Rockefeller Center photography archives in New York City and a storage facility in Pennsylvania where the licensing company Corbis holds the original glass plate negative. Beside the photograph was a note from the son of a local immigrant who left Ireland for New York in the 1920s: "This is my dad on the far right and my uncle-in-law on the far left." They asked the bartender about the note, and "like all good Irish barmen," says Ó Cualáin, he put them in contact with Pat Glynn, the Bostonite who penned it, that very night. He and his brother, Eamonn, the film’s producer, were in a pub in Galway, when they noticed a copy of the photograph hanging in a corner. ![]() “It was a happy accident,” says Ó Cualáin. ![]() Ó Cualáin did not plan to tell the story of the photograph, but that’s exactly what he has done in his latest documentary, Men at Lunch, which debuted earlier this month at the Toronto International Film Festival. I think that is why the photograph works.” “We can all place ourselves on that beam. Who was the photographer? And who are the men? The portrait has become an icon of 20th century American photography.įor the Irish filmmaker Seán Ó Cualáin, the mystery surrounding the photograph is a large part of its appeal. My brother had a poster in his childhood bedroom with actors, such as Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio, photoshopped in place of the steelworkers. You’ve seen the photograph before-and probably some of the playful parodies it has spawned too. But, most famously, all 11 ate lunch on a steel beam, their feet dangling 850 feet above the city’s streets. Some of the tradesmen tossed a football a few pretended to nap. On this particular day, though, they humored a photographer, who was drumming up excitement about the project’s near completion. The men were accustomed to walking along the girders of the RCA building (now called the GE building) they were constructing in Rockefeller Center. On September 20, 1932, high above 41st Street in Manhattan, 11 ironworkers took part in a daring publicity stunt. ![]()
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