Dan Eldon

It was announced in The New York Times on 28 December 2007, that Eldon would be the focus of a biographical film entitled The Journey Is the Destination, the title of which is based on a page from Dan's journals featured in the book of the same name published by Chronicle Books. The film was directed by Bronwen Hughes and produced by Martin Katz, Kathy Eldon, Richard Arlook and Kweku Mandela (a grandson of Nelson Mandela) and was shot in South Africa from July to September 2014. The film, starring Ben Schnetzer, Kelly MacDonald, and Maria Bello, premiered in 2016 at the Toronto Film Festival and was released on Netflix in October 2017.

Eldon stayed in Mogadishu through the spring. During this time, Eldon's pictures were featured in newspapers and magazines around the world. On 12 June 1993, his photo made a double-page spread in Newsweek magazine, as well as the covers of newspapers everywhere. Meanwhile, Pakistani peacekeepers died, making the conflict an international incident, the violence and horror of which was very hard on Eldon. He was nicknamed Warsame, Mayor of Mogadishu by Mogadishans for his friendliness.

Despite having "had enough" by June, Eldon stayed to cover events. On 12 July 1993, he, Associated Press photographer Hansi Krauss, Reuters soundman Anthony Macharia, and Reuters photographer Hos Maina covered the United Nations raid to arrest rebel leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid at a house he was believed to have been occupying. Survivors of the raid went to the journalists' hotel requesting them to take pictures. In a convoy, under the protection of Somalis, Eldon and a group of colleagues went to the bombed area. As they began to take photographs, a mob attacked the journalists. Eldon and his colleagues Krauss, Macharia and Maina were stoned and beaten to death.

During the summer of 1992, the famine in Somalia raged. Eldon flew to the Kenyan refugee camps. The international news agency, Reuters, spotted his work, and he was soon working for the company, shooting the increasingly desperate situation. He followed the story closely and was present at the US Marine landing, where a barrage of international photographers and journalists were waiting for the American soldiers as they left their landing craft in Mogadishu.

In 1991, he returned to UCLA for one academic year, all the time planning his next trip, which was to be across the Sahara. Early in 1992, he moved to Mount Vernon, Iowa, to attend classes at Cornell College.

Eldon returned to UCLA in the autumn of 1990 and began to plan another venture, which necessitated a move to London in January. He attended Richmond College and in the meantime, purchased another Land Rover for a trip to Morocco that summer. He aimed to buy bracelets and belts to sell in America for Student Transport Aid. He was attacked by Moroccan thieves and delayed by Land Rover malfunctions. He spent a fitful summer in Marrakesh, before arriving home in time to ship $5,000 worth of goods to America, which he sold on the beaches of Southern California.

In 1988, Dan graduated from the International School of Kenya, winning the International Relations and Community Service awards. Voted most outstanding student, he addressed his class, emphasising the importance of crossing cultural barriers and caring for others.

In the autumn of 1988, Eldon began his “year off” before university. He called it a “year on”; for him, it felt more challenging than college. He left Kenya for a job at Mademoiselle magazine in New York.

In Kenya, Dan Eldon attended a British school, but soon convinced his parents to transfer him to the International School of Kenya, which included children representing over 40 nationalities. In 1982, an attempted coup in Kenya put the family in the midst of political upheaval. Eldon, aged 12, arrived back in Kenya from a summer holiday several days after the coup and experienced some of its aftermath. In his teens, Eldon joined his mother, Kathy, a freelance journalist for the English-language newspaper, the Nation, in Kenya. Soon, Eldon was taking pictures, which were featured in local newspapers and magazines.

Daniel Robert "Dan" Eldon (18 September 1970 – 12 July 1993) was a British-Kenyan photojournalist, artist and activist, killed in Somalia while working as a Reuters photojournalist. He left behind a series of journals, which Chronicle Books used to publish four books, among them The Journey Is the Destination, The Art of Life, and Safari as a Way of Life.

Dan Eldon, born in London, on September 18, 1970, was the son of Kathy and Mike Eldon. Mike was an Israel-born British citizen of Jewish descent, and his American mother was Protestant of German and Irish immigrant descent. When Dan was seven years old, Eldon and his three-year-old sister Amy moved to Nairobi, Kenya with their parents. The couple later divorced; Mike Eldon is now married to a Kenyan woman, Evelyn Mungai (Transparency International, Kenya), and Kathy is now married to American designer, Michael Bedner.