“”Mission statement for Safari as a Way of Life: To explore the unknown and the familiar distant and near, and to record, in detail with the eyes of a child, any beauty of the flesh or otherwise, horror, irony, traces of utopia or Hell.”
—Dan Eldon
To really know Dan Eldon, the photographer who was killed on assignment in Africa when he was only 22, you have to see his journals. Looking through them is like traveling through wild Africa in a jeep, with a slightly distorted rear view mirror, going 300 miles per hour.
On one page, you might see a photo of his sister Amy, decorated with drawings of cheetahs, eyes and a piece of snakeskin. On the next page, you see Dan’s black-and-white photographs of one African man staring down at a dead youth lying on the ground. Dan writes across the photo in an angry and sarcastic tone, “Enjoy the dead boy! Enjoy!”
From the time he was 14, and living in Africa, through going to four different colleges in America and England, and working in Somalia, Dan filled 17 big, fat canvas books with his thoughts, paintings, doodles and photos.
After his death, Dan’s mother, Kathy, published excerpts from his journals in a 1997 book called “The Journey is The Destination.” Kathy and Dan’s sister, Amy, who live here in Los Angeles, have collaborated on several projects in Dan’s memory, including a documentary, a book to help others deal with grief and a film scheduled for release this year. After talking with Dan’s mother and sister and studying Dan’s work, he seems like a really inspiring person. Though his life was short, he lived it with 100 years worth of passion. You can see it in his journals—the adventures he had, how he tried to help others, how he was willing not only to document but to experience the good, the bad, the beautiful and the ugly.
While she knew Dan was very private about his journals, his mom said she felt it was important to publish them. “I knew in my heart, that if young people have access to this, it will trigger them to create their own art.”
Dan was constantly experimenting with color, texture, and light in his photographs and journals. Many pages are decorated with collages of money, snakeskin, maps, stamps and song lyrics. One photograph of two tribe members has been cut up and loosely reassembled together, creating a striking effect. (Dan’s mom said he was never that good at photography when he was younger, so he would distort the photographs to create a more striking image.)
Dan’s favorite expression was “Seize the Power,” according to his mom. I think he meant that if you see a problem, take action, no matter your age. Dan did this throughout his life. For example, when Dan was only 15, he raised $5,000 by having bake sales, selling T-shirts and holding dances in his backyard, so an African friend could have open heart surgery. The surgery was a success, but the friend died from malaria, contracted in a local hospital.
When Dan was 17 he moved to New York City for a few months’ work as an intern with Mademoiselle magazine. Afterwards he returned to Nairobi, Kenya, and went on safari with two friends. They had a blast traveling through Africa in Dan’s Jeep, which they named Deziree. When they reached South Africa, they came across a South African refugee camp for those fleeing from Mozambique, where they were shocked by the suffering they saw. The horrific conditions in the refugee camp continued to haunt Dan long after his trip.
At 18, while Dan was attending Pasadena Community College, he started a charity called Student Transport Aid to help the refugees from Mozambique. He and several other students and friends raised $17,000 for the refugee camp in South Africa. The following summer, Dan, his sister Amy and 13 other students went on safari across Africa to give money to the camp. When they finally arrived, they gave the refugees one of their vehicles. The money they brought paid for warm blankets, tools and two wells. In a silly section of his journal entitled “Deziree Sex Safari” it is obvious that the trip also was intended to be fun. On one page of his journal Dan pasted black-and-white photographs of the students eating dinner at a restaurant where they were served dried rats. On a picture of his sister, Dan inserted a funny word bubble saying, “I don’t have a thing to wear on Safari.” He titled the section “White Mischief in Malawi” in block white letters.
Dan’s very last journal is unusually somber. Instead of smiling friends, wacky drawings or funny comics, there are stark images of starving people, dusty streets cracked hard from the sun and young boys shooting guns. These are Dan’s photographs from Somalia. In 1992 Dan heard about the famine that had arisen in Somalia due to civil war. He decided to travel to the war-torn land to see it for himself. When he got there, he was horrified with the poverty and violence he witnessed. Working as a freelance photographer, he took shocking images which were published in newspapers and magazines throughout the world, raising international awareness of the country’s devastating situation. Reuters, an international news service, saw some of Dan’s pictures and hired him to photograph the effects of the famine. Only 21, he was the youngest photographer to work for Reuters.
Dan published some of these images in a book titled “Somalia.” The photos are horrific. One young boy looks like a concentration camp survivor-you can count every rib on this child. His eyes roll upward in a face that looks part delirious and part dead. In the book Dan recalls how one day he saw a beautiful young Somali girl wrapped in cloth. Moments later he realized that her hands and feet were blown apart from shrapnel. The girl looked dead, but Dan was told she would survive. He compared this to the state of the war-torn country: “Somalia will survive, but what kind of life is it for the people who have been so wounded?”
Another picture in “Somalia” shows a naked girl who seems to be completely shriveled up, laying on a thin cloth. Dan wrote that he slipped a few coins under her cloth, but she didn’t seem to notice. He said he assumes that they were stolen a few minutes later.
Some photos manage to show Dan’s optimism for Somalia’s people. One image shows a man in a bright green shirt, with a gun in his lap, holding a wide-eyed African Gazelle, which Dan bought and named Leila. That photo reminds you that death isn’t everywhere, and that even in a place like Somalia where children are starving, there is hope.
Dan did not lead the typical journalist’s life. In addition to dodging bullets to get close-up pictures, and swearing in Somali to anybody who tried to steal his camera equipment, Dan ran a postcard and T-shirt business on the side. The most popular item was a T-shirt saying “Viva Somalia… Thanks for not looting.” (Ironically, 200 of the shirts were stolen.) Dan took his shrapnel-proof vest, which Reuters photographers must wear in war zones, to the tailors to be decorated with a funky African-style zebra print. He used to joke “I am attending Mogadishu University, learning how not to get my head blown off.” (Mogadishu is the Somali town where Dan was based.)
But Dan couldn’t protect himself from the violence around him. On July 12, 1993 a United Nations helicopter bombed the house of a suspected Somali terrorist. Local people were devastated and enraged by the bombing because more than 100 Somali religious leaders and civilians were killed or mutilated in the process. When Dan and four fellow journalists arrived at the scene and started taking pictures, the mob turned on them. Four including Dan were stoned and beaten to death; one survived.
His mother and sister had a hard time coping with his death. Amy, who was attending college in London at the time of her brother’s death, had to take some time off from school. She said it was as if half of her had died too. Now, five years after her brother’s death, she is beginning to feel whole again. Recently, she and her mother have been working on a film about Dan that will come out this year. They also produced and hosted a TV documentary, “Dying to Tell the Story” about Dan and other journalists who risked their lives to get the story. In the documentary, Amy visits the site in Somalia where her brother was killed for the first time. She and her mom also wrote a book called “Angel Catcher, a Journal of Loss and Remembrance” to help others deal with the death of a loved one. A web site about Dan’s life is in development.
You can help in raising money and awareness about the conditions in Somalia by starting a Crisis Relief club at school or becoming involved in several organizations that bring aid to Somalia, like Save the Children. One of the programs set up in Dan’s memory is an Outward-Bound-style program called DEPOT at the Blazers Safe Haven based in South Central-Call (323) 292-2261 if you would like to get involved. Some funds for visual media projects also have been awarded through the Creative Visions Foundation. For more information, contact Kathy at [email protected] or write to Creative Visions, 1223 Sunset Plaza Dr., Los Angeles CA 90069.”