By the age of 27, he was appointed the Photographic Director for the Rockefeller Center’s development. It was during this appointment, that Ebbets took his iconic “Lunch atop Skyscraper” on the 69th floor of the RCA building in the last several months of construction.
So why did it take so long for him to be credited for it? It has been claimed that multiple photographers collaborated on the shoot, which is likely true because, unless they were self-portraits, we do have several photographs of Charles himself taken that day by at least one other photographer. And who would blame them? The dapper Mr. Ebbets , pictured above and below, was ever so photogenic. However, ever since “Lunch atop Skyscraper” was ‘rediscovered’ in the last two decades and began to circulate worldwide, no other photographer nor any photographer’s estate has ever claimed authorship of it.
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To eventually prove that their father was the artist, the Ebbets family found original invoices billing for his work done at the Rockefeller Centre, copies of the newspaper article found in his personal scrapbook and his original glass negatives that day on the beam adjacent to the 11 workmen.
From the article:
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This is super cool, but also gives me anxiety just looking at any of these photos. Adrenaline junky I am not.