from the

by Kathy Eldon, mother of Dan Eldon

I was intensely proud of what I was allowed to see in the pages of Dan's journals, but could never understand why he confined his artistic expression to the inside of books. Often I would ask him to produce works I could put on my walls. But Dan would always refuse, sometimes quite indignantly, and return to his black-bound journals, books he shared with only the closest of friends or family. By the time of his death, Dan had filled seventeen volumes, creating thousands of pages reflecting his own peculiar perspective on life. Layered like an archaeological dig, the pages are bizarre and colorful relics of a multifaceted civilization, intensely personal though inhabited by many different people.

When Dan was seventeen, I left home and moved to London. Dan also left Africa to work as a design intern at Mademoiselle magazine in New York. His journal reflects his confusion at our family's dissolution, his resulting distrust of women, and the extreme sense of alienation he felt in the city. His images are hard-edged, cold and industrial, bustling and cynical, though sometimes nostalgically overlaid with lyrical silhouettes of dancing figures, buffaloes, and wildebeasts. In New York 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. Our relationship was difficult. He worried about me, but always told me he was proud that I had been brave and did what I knew I had to do.

Three months later, Dan fled back to Nairobi, where he bought a seventeen-year-old Land Rover from an Australian traveler. He named the rusting hulk Deziree, paying tribute to the memory of a wild Italian girlfriend, and together with his friends Lengai and Patrick Falconer, set off on a great safari through Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. The intrepid explorers photographed themselves with Pygmies, battled impossible roads, sampled dried rats, bribed hostile border guards, and endured the threats of guerrillas. Their journey was a rollicking adventure -- until they chanced upon a vast camp for displaced Mozambiquan refugees in Malawi. Stunned by the poverty and inspired by the irrepressible spirit of the people, who had virtually nothing, they vowed to return one day with tools for the refugees to help themselves.

Always restless, he plotted more safaris, and with each trip developed a greater proficiency in manipulating and distorting their record in his journal. He worked with glue, ink, photocopied images, and anything he could pick up along the way. Even without the benefit of computer technology, his images are startlingly multi-layered. In Japan he explored eroticism in ways he had never attempted before. His Moscow pages are hard and angry. In Marrakesh, he went slightly mad while waiting weeks for spare Land Rover parts, a state of mind reflected in the murky gray depths of his pages and the strange characters he photographed in the back streets, 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.

It was during [the summer of 1992] 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, discovering on their arrival that the famine was far worse than anyone had realized. Horrified, the pair photographed scores of dead babies, skeletal children, and hundreds of starving men and women. No longer speculating on the nature of man from a safe distance, Dan had to confront reality firsthand. 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.

Something happened during that journey to irrevocably change Dan. He returned again and again to Somalia, inexorably drawn to the unfolding human drama he felt compelled to document. In a book about his experiences that he later self-published:

"After my first trip to Somalia, the terror of being surrounded by violence and the horrors of the famine threw me into a dark depression. Even journalists who had covered many conflicts were moved to tears. But for me, this was my first experience with war. Before Somalia, I had only seen two dead bodies in my life. I have now seen hundreds, tossed into ditches like sacks. The worst things I could not photograph.

"One Sunday morning, they brought in a pretty girl, wrapped in a colorful cloth. I saw that both her hands and feet had been severed by shrapnel. Someone had tossed a grenade in the market. She looked serene, like she was dead . . . but the nurse said she would survive. It made me think of the whole country. Somalia will survive, but what kind of life is it for a people that have been so wounded. I don't know how these experiences have changed me, but I feel different."

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.

Seventeen days later, on July 12,1993, Dan and three colleagues, Hansi Krauss of the Associated Press and Anthony Macharia and Hos Maina of Reuters, were called to the scene of a 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, stoning and beating them to death. In a moment of horrific irony, Dan and his friends were murdered by the very people they were trying to help.

One week later, we gathered together on Kipenget's land to celebrate Dan's life. Billowy clouds hung in a perfect sky as a crowd of many hundreds found places on the grass before a makeshift altar decorated with flowers, African cloth, and one of Dan's collection of funny hats. Dan's friends of every shade and color, religion and creed, joined together in a ceremony of peace in a place more beautiful than any cathedral on earth.

Not long afterwards someone brought us a rucksack of Dan's belongings, retrieved from his hotel room in Mogadishu. In it we found Dan's last journal. Whereas all the books he had kept before included collages, whimsical drawings, and fanciful images, the Somali journal is stark and simple, nothing but photographs stuck on pages. Like his life, it is unfinished, the photographs standing as mute but powerful reminders of a life that ended too soon.

Visit the pages of Dan Eldon's journals

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