'My dad is in famous NY skyscraper pic': Swede

Members of a family in western Sweden have claimed their migrant worker father is one of the men seated on a steel beam and having lunch high above the skyscrapers in the iconic picture from 1930s New York City.

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“I remember when dad and I went for a walk in the forest in the 1970s and he mentioned this amazing picture that was taken when he was building a skyscraper, and how much he wanted to see it,” Britt-Marie Johansson Duwfa told local newspaper Hallands-Posten.

She thinks her father, John Johansson, who went to the US to work but later came home to western Sweden and married, is seated sixth from the left in the famous image “Lunch atop a Skyscraper”, which has been turned into posters and post cards, adorning knickknacks across the world.

“I really wish I’d tried to find it,” said his retired librarian daughter.

DOCUMENTARY FILM MAKER SAYS SWEDISH CLAIM IS PLAUSIBLE

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Her father smoked, as does the man about to open his lunch box in the image. A slideshow of pictures from Johansson's life does reveal his resemblance to the man in the picture.

SEE A CLIP FROM THE DOCUMENTARY "MEN AT LUNCH"



When the family discussed the image at a recent family gathering, another relative said he was convinced that the man next to Johansson was another local resident, Albin Svensson.

Hallands-Posten notes that Svensson was slightly cross-eyed, but it is hard to tell if the man seated fifth from the left in the image suffers from the same condition as he is glancing down at his neighbour.

The image was taken by the Rockefeller Centre in midtown Manhattan. Behind the men, the rooftops of New York stretch towards Central Park. The Hudson River is visible in the far distance.

Corbis, which now owns the rights to the picture, still credits the photograph to ‘Anonymous’, although it is widely believed that Charles C. Ebbets took the picture.

There have been many attempts to identify the men, and many more claims to positive identifications than there are workers in the pictures.

Irish filmmaker Seán Ó Cualáin has tried to find out who the men are and chronicled his work in the documentary film "Men at lunch".

"We have no idea who the two men you identified are," he told Hallands-Posten in an email.

"Steel workers were often Irish, Native Americans, Scandinavians and Newfoundlanders, so a Swedish claim is credible".

When contacted by The Local, Johansson Duwfa said the family was no longer granting interviews about the photograph.

TT/The Local/at
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