TIME Magazine Recreates ‘Lunch atop a Skyscraper’ Photo with AI Leaders
TIME Magazine recreated Lunch atop a Skyscraper — one of the 20th century’s most iconic photos — by replacing Depression-era construction workers with billionaires credited with driving the AI boom for its latest cover.
On Thursday, TIME Magazine named the “architects of AI” as its collective “Person of the Year 2025,” citing their ability to deliver the age of thinking machines with transformative technology.
To illustrate the selection on the magazine cover, TIME Magazine paid homage to the 1932 photograph Lunch atop a Skyscraper, which shows 11 construction workers seated on a steel beam hundreds of feet above New York City. The image, taken during the construction of Rockefeller Center, was previously named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential photographs of all time. The photograph was staged as a publicity image to promote the skyscraper and was part of a broader campaign that highlighted the scale of the project during the Great Depression.
While the 1932 image was captured by one of three photographers who climbed atop 30 Rockefeller Plaza, TIME Magazine’s cover is an illustration created by Chicago-based artist Jason Seiler. In TIME’s reimagining, the original construction workers are replaced by figures that the magazine describes as the “Architects of AI.” Those shown seated on the beam include Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta; Elon Musk, of xAI; Jensen Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia; Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI; and Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind Technologies.
Seiler depicts the technology figures seated along the steel beam, wearing contemporary business attire and holding devices such as laptops and smartphones while suspended above a city skyline. In its accompanying cover story, TIME magazine says it aims to recognize the people building, designing, and shaping AI. The magazine also explores the growing divide between those driving rapid advances in AI and widespread public concern about the technology’s potential for widespread harm.
According to Hyperallergic, Seiler’s cover illustration has prompted criticism from social media users, with individuals describing TIME’s reinterpretation of the photograph as a mockery of “the most iconic blue-collar image of all time.”
“In the original [photo], we get an idealized glimpse into the life and labor of the city’s historically immigrant-heavy, under-valued workforce as they create a world far above our heads with skillsets far beyond our reach,” Hyperallergic writes. “Today, we’re looking at CEOs and other inflated, out-of-touch executives who have overreached into every aspect of our world to create something that makes our own basic to hard-earned skills nearly obsolete.”
The recreation marks the latest instance of Lunch atop a Skyscraper being reimagined in a modern context. In 2024, SpaceX recreated the photograph to celebrate the engineers behind its efforts to develop technology capable of catching a first-stage Super Heavy booster, again drawing on one of the most famous historical photographs in the world.
Image credits: Header photo via TIME/TIME Person of the Year.