Mount Carmel Compound, Twelve Miles Outside Waco, Texas, from the series "On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam"

About this artwork

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Joel Sternfeld

Title

Mount Carmel Compound, Twelve Miles Outside Waco, Texas, from the series "On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam"

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1995

Medium

Chromogenic print

Edition

1 of 7

Inscriptions

Unmarked recto; inscribed verso, on mount, along bottom edge, in black ink: JS.224.0 1/7 Mount Carmel Compound, twelve miles outside Waco, Texas, November 1995 N-November 1995 / P-September 1996 Joel Sternfeld For fifty-one days, FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agents surrounded the property of the Branch Davidians, a small religious order based near Waco. The siege began after a raid by ATF agents on February 28, 1993, in which four agents and six Davidians were killed. The agency conducted the raid in the belief that the sect’s leader, David Koresh, was keeping a large arsenal of illegal weapons. The FBI, citing the abuse of children in the compound, received permission from Attorney General Janet Reno to end the siege by tear-gassing the buildings. Within minutes of this attack, the compound was ablaze. It has never been determined whether the fire was a result of the assault or was set by the Branch Davidians themselves. Koresh, a self-proclaimed messiah, and eighty of his followers died in the fire. From the series, On This Site: Landscape in Memoriam

Dimensions

Image/paper: 47.3 × 59.7 cm (18 5/8 × 23 9/16 in.); Mount: 63.4 × 76.4 cm (25 × 30 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Jeanne and Richard S. Press

Reference Number

1997.777.12

Extended information about this artwork

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