The Mount Carmel flag design based on video footage
by Matthew D. Wittmer
My recreations of the flag are based on video and still photos taken of the actual flag that was flown in front of Mount Carmel during the 1993 siege. Images taken of the flag during the siege accessible to me was only with cameras that were miles away using zoom lenses. These cameras were stationed at various vantage points to photograph the building proper, so the flag is often quite small in those photos. To add, the wind was often blowing the flag at various angles in all kinds of different light situations in the footage that remains of the building. This makes having a full view of the actual flag quite mysterious. There is not a perfect image of the flag that clearly reveals all of its details. The snake on the original flag consisted of a reflective silver material. The flag itself was made of satin as per my discussion with one survivor, Kathy Jones, who had worked on sewing it.
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I created the above image for the 2010 April 19th memorial service in Waco, Texas. I wanted this image to be timless in nature and more encyclopedic, which is why I used an illustrative line work and clear color in the design. April 2010
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This design approximates the proportions existing in the flat spacial dimensions of shape in the flag’s design. June 2009
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I created the color woodcut above for the 2009 April 19th memorial service. Note the snake tail here is displayed as red in color. This is because the snake appears differently in photos of it during the siege depnding on the light conditions and wind situation. The fabric used for the snake on the flag was reflictive silver, similar to foil. This material could have been sewn on top of the blue material used for the majority of the flag. If this was the case, it would make the snake tail appear darker if a source of light is behind the flag more than in front of it, which could account for why it does appear dark red to me in frames I’ve frozen from various raw news footage taken throughout the duration of the siege. April 2009