Product Description

By the time he was twenty-two, Dan Eldon had led a relief mission across Africa; worked as a graphic designer in New York; studied (intermittently) at four colleges; travelled through Europe, Africa, Japan, and the United States; founded a charity for Mozambiquan refugees; directed a film; written a book; started up his own photography business; and become a photojournalist for Reuters news agency, covering the famine and civil war in Somalia. There, in 1993, he was killed in an eruption of mob violence while on assignment. In a world of rules and regularity, Eldon was a renegade, a risk-taker, and an adventurer. His is no ordinary journal; it is an astonishing collage of photos, drawings, words, maps, and clippings that reveals his strange and vivid life. The Journey is the Destination is at once the vision of an artist in his prime and the unrestrained outpourings of a young man just beginning to live.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #238132 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .3 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

From Amazon.com
Dan Eldon, who was only 22 when he was chased down and killed by an angry mob in Somalia, was one of the youngest photographic stringers in Africa. But his journalistic work, which had appeared in Time and Newsweek, showed only a small part of his talent. Eldon excelled as an artist in his collages, which combined his photographs of Africa with paint, pastiche, pop culture images, advertising, and official documents. The Journey Is the Destination collects pages from the 17 scrapbooks that held his art. Chronicling his work from age 14 through his death at 22, this volume is startling not only in the intensity and thoughtfulness of the pages, but also in the fact that someone so young could have this kind of artistic depth and insight.

From Library Journal
Photojournalists who risk their lives while on assignment in dangerous circumstances are often unsung heroes. In 1993, Dan Eldon was a 22-year-old Reuters photographer covering the severe famine and strife in Somalia when he was brutally murdered by an enraged mob. In a painful tribute to her son, freelance journalist Kathy Eldon has assembled and prefaced a somewhat offbeat, scrapbook-type publication containing collages, sketches, photographs, and written ruminations culled from her son's 17 journals. Born in England and raised in Kenya, Eldon comes through as an exuberant, passionate, handsome youth who was troubled by the world's violence and deprivations. He appears to have possessed a fearless spirit, and women were attracted to him. With Eldon prominently featured in an upcoming Turner-produced TV documentary on journalists at risk and with an exhibition of his work opening in New York, this book could attract a wider-than-expected audience and is recommended for general collections.?Joan Levin, MLS, Chicago
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
This book has been written up almost everywhere, around the world, in local newspapers, and international publications. Here are a few of the reviews, each reflecting on the profundity of Dan Eldon's story.

By Peter Canby

Dan Eldon was only twenty-two when, at the height of conflict in Somalia, he and three other journalists were chased down by a mob enraged at a United Nations helicopter attack and stoned to death. The year was 1993. Eldon was among the first to document the famine in Somalia; he had risen rapidly through the ranks of war photographers, with spreads in "Time, Newsweek, "and "Stern." But, as "The Journey Is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon" shows, he was an artist as well. The son of an English father and an American mother, he grew up in Nairobi, where he became fascinated by the mixture of European and African cultures and learned to speak fluent Swahili. At fifteen, he began recording his life in a series of eclectic, exuberantly collaged