The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon [Hardcover]

Dan Eldon (Author, Photographer), Kathy Eldon (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1997

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; traveled through Europe, Africa, Japan, and the US; 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. But, despite all his travels, he knew that the interior landscape is the only one truly worth exploring, and this is the journey he dedicated himself to recording. His is no ordinary journal; it is an astonishing seventeen-volume collage of photos, drawings, words, maps, clippings, paint, scraps, shards, and trash that reveals his strange and vivid life. The Journey is the Destination offers a selection of pages from these extraordinary journals, at once the vision of an artist in his prime and the unrestrained outpourings of a young man just beginning to live.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; 1st edition (August 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811815862
• ISBN-13: 978-0811815864
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #121,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely life-altering, April 30, 2003

By 

Ciara (Milwaukee, WI United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon (Hardcover)

This is the most beautiful book I have ever read, and it hardly contains any words that weren't torn from a magazine or cut from a food container. I absolutely recommend it for anyone who is touched by lives led for adventure, for journalists and photojournalists alike, for diary-keepers and journalers, for artists and photographers and collagists and secret writers of poetry... Anyone who has a speck of compassion in them and an eye for color and beauty will treasure this. What a life lived!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dan Eldon is a Lantern, February 20, 2002

By 

Rita King (Cooperstown, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon (Hardcover)

This book will put you in a trance and change your life. It reinforces what is real and important, and pulses with the brilliant existence of Dan Eldon, who lived to his maximum potential, passionately, fearlessly free.

We all have the ability to minimize our flaws and enhance our strengths. Dan reminds us of this. We have the ability to see beyond the ordinary to glimpse the majestic miracle of being alive. This book is filled with the dreams and reflections of a true romantic hero, a war correspondent willing to put his own life on the line to deliver the truth. It is a book of light and shadow, and rather than telling people what to think, Dan offered his own perspective.

This is a book for people of all ages because it removes the linearity from time, from age and development, and proves that the length of a life, in this case, twenty-two years, is a cross section of eternity. My perspectives on life and death have changed because the images in this book are so powerful.

You will find something new every time you open this book, if you look. You will be amazed, and grateful that Dan took the time to record so much. You might get the fever to start doing this on your own. This book spans the gamut of human emotion, and there is something in it for everyone.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly Profound, February 24, 2005

By 

kcbooks (Tampa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon (Hardcover)

I bought this book upon it's release in 1997. I can remember allowing the contents of this memoir to captivate me for hours on end. I lent my copy to a friend shortly thereafter and subsequently forgot about it. I recently ordered a replacement and I must say, this book is even more compelling than I ever remembered. Dan Eldon was a profound visionary, an articulate statesman and a devoted caretaker. As a Reuters photo-journalist, he traveled the world and served as a dipomatic embassador to many, yet his life was taken prematurely in a stoning riot in Somalia. He experienced more in his brief 21 years than most of us will over an entire lifetime. A MUST HAVE.