THE JOURNEY IS THE DESTINATION

Do you sometimes get frustrated when realising you aren’t getting the most out of life ? That your life is fleeting away without real highlights or definite challenges? Why not giving up your ordinary dayjob and go crossing the world as a travel writer, start an independant record company; just doing the things that you’re really good at? Wouldn’t life be much more satisfying ? DAN ELDON for example, lived more in 22 years than most people could ever dream of in 88 years. He traveled through four continents, led expeditions across Africa, wrote a book, worked as a graphic designer in New York, made a film, and became a respected Reuters photojournalist. A couple of years ago, I bought a dazzling book about Dan’s life which sadly turned out on a devastating tragedy in 1993. Read on to find out more about this amazing young man's extraordinary life...

Dan Eldon was born in England in 1970. At the age of two and a half, his British father and American mother enrolled him at a London Rudolph Steiner School, which emphasized the importance of music and art for young children. Five years later, Dan and his two and a half years younger sister Amy moved with their parents from the orderly gray streets of suburban London to the chaos and riotous color of Nairobi. At the International School of Kenya, Dan was surrounded by children from all over the world and each child shared a new perspective of the world with his or her classmates, creating a dynamic atmosphere that encouraged curiosity and creativity.

When Dan was fourteen, he learned that a young Kenyan child had a serious heart condition and required surgery. Immediately, he organized his friends to raise money, designing boxer shorts and tee shirts, and setting up bake sales and a series of wild dances in a hut in the back garden. He often accompanied his mom - who was a free-lance journalist - on interviews and received many photo credits in the papers.

When Dan was seventeen, his mom left home and moved to London. Dan also left Africa to work as a design intern at a New York magazine. There, his darker side emerged, and he often flirted with danger in the rougher parts of town where he liked to photograph homeless kids, street people, and gang members, with whom he had an immediate rapport. Three months later, Dan fled back to Nairobi, bought a seventeen-year-old Land Rover and set off with 2 friends on a challenging safari through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, enduring constant threats of guerrillas. When his 2 friends abandoned the safari at Victoria Falls to return to their universities, Dan continued alone, traveling from Malawi to Cape Town while using South African jails for accomodation. Always restless, he explored the world around him, hurriedly documenting everything he experienced.

During his journeys, Dan produced magical scrapbooks in which everything he had collected along the roads found a place in an integrated whole, while nothing was as it had been. Photographs were cut into pieces, drawings reassembled, feathers trimmed to fit the borders of the pages, and the beaded jewelry he designed, shaped to create whimsical frames for the images. Each page was overlaid with watercolors, markers, ink, even smudges of blood. The effect was dazzling. It was as though his spirit had been released in his art. His intriguing artistic expression was confined to the inside of these books, which were shared only with the closest of his friends or family.

Back in California, Dan studied philosophy, Japanese, English literature and Spanish, picked up desktop publishing and grappled with macroeconomics and history. Together with several friends, he founded a charity called 'Student Transport Aid' which was dedicated to helping displaced Mozambiquan refugees he had met in Malawi during one of his journeys. Through a variety of ingenious (and sometimes illegal) means, the group of volunteers managed to raise $17,000 and Dan headed back to Africa, together with thirteen people from seven different nationalities, aged fifteen to twenty-two.

By landcruiser, they arrived at the refugee camp and donated one of their 2 jeeps to the 'Save The Children Fund', as well as money for two wells and tools and blankets for the refugees. Each person was transformed by the safari, but no one was affected more than Dan, then aged nineteen. He plotted more safaries in Africa, explored eroticism in Japan and photographed in the back streets of Moscow and Marrakesh where few tourists ventured. Constantly his pages asked and answered questions; the power of good versus evil, the role of violence in society, and the effect of war on humanity were recurring themes for him. Each time, he collected his experiences in his black-bound journals, the thousands of pages reflecting his own peculiar perspective of life.

In 1992, he started a photography business in Nairobi, shooting ads for local newspapers and magazines while making a film in his spare time. It was during that summer that Dan heard rumors of a famine in the Somali town of Baidoa. Together with a friend from the Philadelphia Inquirer, he drove north to see if there was any truth to the stories and discoverd that it was far worse than anyone had realized. Horrified, the pair photographed scores of dead babies, skeletal children, and hundreds of starving men and women. His pictures were featured on the front pages of newspapers and magazines in many places, and were among the first to trigger the conscience of the world. As the conflict intensified, the terror of being surrounded by violence and the horrors of the famine threw Dan into a dark depression.

With each trip back to Somalia, Dan grew closer to the people. Mischievous, cheerful, and very good at his job, he seemed to know everyone – aid workers, Marines, diplomats, and thieves. The locals dubbed him « the Mayor of Mogadishu », and children followed him down the potholed streets like the Pied Piper. Inexorably drawn to the unfolding human drama, he felt compelled to document, although sometimes he just could not photograph because of the cruelty of what he saw.

On July 12, 1993, Dan and three colleagues were called to the scene of the brutal bombing by United Nations forces of a house believed to be the headquarters of General Aidid. When the photographers arrived at the compound and began shooting the bloody carnage, the crowd - enraged at the death or mutilation of over a hundred people, including religious leaders and respected elders of the community - turned on the journalists. In a moment of horrific irony, Dan and his friends were stoned and beaten to death by the very people they were trying to help. Dan Eldon was hardly 22 years old...

For more information about Dan Eldon, check out the website made by his sister. By the time of his death, Dan had filled seventeen black-bound journals, full of collages, writings, drawings, and photographs. An incredible collection of these journals can be found in the aforementioned fascinating book ‘The Journey Is The Destination : The Journals Of Dan Eldon’, first published in the United States in 1997 by Chronicle Books in San Francisco. It’s one of the most intriguing books that I have ever come across. You also might to check out ‘Angel Catcher : A Journal Of Loss And Remembrance’ written by Dan’s mom and sister. This grieving journal not only helps you through the loss of a loved one, but also celebrates the life of the person you love. With room for photographs, heading to inspire reflection, and space to record your own thoughts and memories, this keepsake book will capture forever the treasured memories of a loved one. It is a way to catch – and hold – an angel. This book is also published by Chronicle Books.