The Perfect Mentor: Dan Eldon

Being introduced to Dan Eldon's work has been one of the most inspirational experiences of my life. After a short seminar about Dan in photography class and a magnetic introduction to, The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon, I was hooked. I noticed the way he poured his heart and soul onto the pages of his recovered journals and I was in a trance of infatuation, appreciation and jealousy. After my ravenous eyes scanned the pages of this book, I flipped back to the beginning to read the introduction, written by his mother, Kathy Eldon. My love grew for Dan when I realized where some of the feelings and thoughts put into each image in his journal had originated from. Dan was born in England in 1970. I read to find out that from a young age, Dan had been fed creative gestures of wonder, colour and excitement. His mother wrote of how she handmade books, toys and baby mobiles to dangle infront of him. When Dan was two and a half, his parents enrolled him in a school that emphasized the importance of art and music for young children. Five years later, Dan and his family moved to Nairobi, Kenya... and continued to instill the importance and joy of creativity into Dan and his sister, Amy's, life. His mother goes on to write about Dan's love to help people; and includes touching stories during his realization that creativity could change lives. These stories included raising money for a Kenyan girl to pay for her heart surgery, bringing blankets and $17, 000 of raised aid to refugees in Malawi, and using his photographs to get the world to care about famine-stricken Somalia. Inspired, he took action and created impact. (Very very very very)Tragically, Dan was stoned to death in Somalia by a mob (a group of people who he was trying to help, ironically) reacting to the United Nations bombing raid on the suspected headquarters of Muhammed Farah Aidid, in July 1993, when we was only 22 years old. But by the time he reached 22, he had already achieved great distinction for his work as a "war photographer". As his mother puts it, "His photographs told half the story. The other half lay hidden away in seventeen black-bound journals filled with collages, writings, drawings and photographs." 

Dan confronted reality first hand, and no longer let himself or any of his viewers "speculate on the nature of man from a safe distance." An example of this is when he went down to the Somali town of Baidoa with a friend, after he heard rumors of a famine. When he arrived, they discovered the famine was way worse than expected, and continued to capture of the horror of dead babies, skeletal children and hundreds of starving men and women... with their cameras lenses. His photos were featured on the front pages of  newspapers and magazines in many places of the places, and "were among the first to trigger the conscience of the world." I think the significance of Dan's work is how inclusive it is . It really makes you feel like you know Dan, and have known him forever. You feel like you are apart of his journey, and when you physically stop looking at his work... it is stuck in your mind like a thumbprint; generating not the exact same ideas as him but gaining an inspirational push into thinking about how you could make a difference. A year after his death, his family put together some of the works from his journals and published it for the world to see. His spirit lived on and continued to inspire others with his amazing messages of peace, generosity and creativity. In 1994, Mike Eldon (Dan's dad), started The Dan Eldon Place Of Tomorrow, or The DEPOT in Nairobi. The DEPOT was made to keep Dan's memory and spirit alive through an outdoor leadership development center for young people... which has since moved tens of thousands of people. In 1997, Amy and Kathy Eldon spent several months shooting and editing the two-hour, Emmy nominee documentary, Dying to Tell the Story, about frontline journalists. In 1998, Kathy Eldon launched the Creative Visions Foundation to help other creative activists like Dan use film, photography and art to ignite positive change in the world. 

Dan's "multimedia style" was incredibly effective at getting people to listen to him... especially since he had such powerful things to say. Dan will always be a mentor for me. He has changed my perspective; not just in the way I view photography but in the way view exsistance.

"If you can't hear the bones and the blood and the breathing beneath
these pages, then you are deaf or dead."
-Bloomsbury Review

Dan has such a beautiful way of manipulating photographs. It's the difference
between a good photograph and a completely
intrugining sight. 

M-M-M-M-MULTIMEDIA

He makes me laugh. He talks more about the
apperence of the coin rather than about how his hand was just cut off...

I love how he cut up the photo of the two men and put
it ontop of the original photo. So creative!

........................Amazing. Completely jealous and in love by this point of the book.

I love the last photograph. I have seriously considered
buying a shirt with this image on it
(amazing Dan Eldon clothing here!)

I think this is so powerful and a little scary. Dan has a beautiful mind

"A talismanic journal of an artist's youth... For young people who doubt that a life grander than MTV and the mall can be achieved in this age, Eldon's journals prove otherwise."
-Washington Post

Mimicking Dan Eldon's work was extremely fun. Since I was exposed to Dan at the very beginning of the semester (PS. I have since then bought 3 books associated to him), my entire sketchbook is basically a tribute to him. I have tried to follow in his footsteps in some way on every page. Thank you for all the inspiration, Dan. 

In these next few pages of my sketchbook, I tried to mimick how Dan makes witty little remarks or sayings that intertwine with his photographs and artwork. I think its an extremely effective way to create art, because you're creating amusement for yourself with every new layer and comment you put onto the page. It keeps the "flow" going and breathes life into the pages of a sketchbook. 

I also tried to mimic his constant use of multimedia. I drew in pictures/deigns and inserted photos from magazines  on top of the artists original photographs... to add multi dimensions to my sketchbook.

(I think this is funny)

For THESE next few pages  of my sketch book I put photos of my family members, with quotes, sayings or images that inspire me to think deeper. I thought of how close Dan was to his family, how much they loved him and how his death would not let him from continuing his passion of helping people. His parents and his sister have made many speeches, documentaries, books and even organizations... in Dan's name. 

I took this photo to solidify the the relationship with the women in my family. I want to show the same love and support to my two younger sisters that my mother and grandmother have shown to me. I think Dan could appreciate the idea of taking a photo of a photo....that was taken in the same spot as the original photo had been taken in. 

I remember I was hearing a lot about environmental disasters when I made this and realizing our oblivion to the fact that we have been hurting the environment for so many years has finally come back to haunt us in major ways. I used a cyanotype that I had made for a previous assignment (which I made with the intent of some of the same environmental issues) but additionally added the words "restless soul, lie down. Lie down for a while with your ear against the earth". (adding words and thoughts... and covering them up...a very Dan thing to do). And on the other side have a photo of a typical posed photo-shoot in the leaves with a fluffy dog with the title "Country Life".... on-top of kind of ironic photos of solar panels, rising temperatures, and a big image of a Homo Erectus (before Homo Sapiens....aka humans) which represent the bigger picture of "Earth Life". I then printed a silk screen over both pages to create unity and depth. 

I made these pages together while I was thinking about the cycles of life- billions before and billions after. I believe I mimicked Dan in a good way here because I used a lot of multimedia. Drawing, photos (from a magazine) and paint.

For this page I contrasted the "big" materialistic things with a "tiny" thing that amounts to the most- a baby. The start of a generation and a future. I put in pictures of big, impressive buildings, a photogram jewelry and money (thank you for that Ms. Zanini) and a printed contact sheet. I then got the mother and baby from an ad in a magazine and silk screened "here lies the future" onto the baby's back. 

I used an invereted image on an acetate sheets and used tape and paint to make the background. I used vibrant and loud colours for the background to create an overall "overwhelming" affect. I can look at this and feel as though I'm increasing my heart rate.... which Dan's work makes me feel like sometimes. 

Using an eraser, I erased half of a woman's face from a magazine... and drew in big industrial looking structures.  I like the seriousness of it. 

I decided to write "If I don't...who will?" because that is part of what I interpereted from the experience of "meeting" Dan Eldon. 

I put in a blue acetate of my eyes in-between these two pages of my sketchbook. I think it makes my sketchbook more interactive and personal- exactly what Dan has made thousands of people feel like while looking through the published pages of his journals. 

I silk screened this photo of myself onto the back of a cyanotype that didn't work out... and then glued it all to my sketchbook. This is like a tribute to Dan and his desired canvas- the pages of a black-bound sketchbook.







HIS MISSION: "To explore the unknown and the 
familiar, distant and near, 
and to record in details with the eyes of a child, 
any beauty, horror, irony, traces 
of utopia or Hell."






Bibliography:

• New, Jennifer. Dan Eldon: Safari as a Way of Life. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle, 2011. Print.
• Eldon, Dan, and Kathy Eldon. The Journey Is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon. San Francisco: Chronicle, 1997. Print.
• New, Jennifer. Dan Eldon: The Art of Life. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2001. Print.
• Creative Visions Foundation — Change through Creativity. Web. 15 Jan. 2012. <http://www.creativevisions.org/>.