The story of Dan Eldon - a photographer who died on the job

Photography is a dangerous profession, especially if your specialization is reportage photography. These people have to work in the hottest spots on the planet and often risk their lives. British photographer Dan Eldon has traveled half the world and visited many dangerous regions. His photographs show real life in places that most of us only know about from the news. Unfortunately, one of the business trips was the last for the reporter.

Dan Eldon was born in 1970 in the British capital London. He was interested in photography since childhood, and when he graduated from school, he decided to devote his whole life to this business. Dan was never interested in fashion shoots or working with celebrities. He loved to travel and on his trips he photographed the lives of ordinary people without embellishment.

Traveling the world with a camera, Eldon had visited more than 40 countries by the age of 22. He traveled all over Europe, visited the USA, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. But Africa has always remained the photographer’s true love. Even for his education, Dan chose not a British university, but an educational institution in the capital of Kenya, Nairobi.

After receiving his diploma, Eldon got a job at a charity mission. He and his colleagues helped people in the poorest corners of the Dark Continent. It was his dream job - he could tell in his photographs about the places where the population struggles for survival every day. Military conflicts, hunger, poverty, epidemics - Dan filmed it all to show the well-fed Western world a real disaster zone.

Returning from another long business trip, Eldon received an offer that he could not refuse. He was invited to work as a photojournalist for the Reuters agency, which is the dream of thousands of photographers around the world. In 1993, Dan and his colleagues were tasked with covering events in war-torn Somalia.

On July 12, 1993, Eldon, Associated Press photographer Hansi Krauss, Reuters sound engineer Anthony Macharia and photographer Jos Maina went to the site of the UN raid. Then the military tried to capture the rebel leader Mohammed Farah Aidid. During the peacekeeping operation carried out by the US military, civilians were killed.

Deng and his three colleagues arrived in the capital, Mogadishu, at the wrong time. Local residents, outraged by the deaths of their compatriots at the hands of the Americans, thirsted for revenge. White people with cameras and video cameras became objects of hatred. Despite the fact that the reporters shouted that they were not Americans, the brutal crowd stoned them to death.

In 2016, the film “The Journey is the Destination” was released, dedicated to those tragic events. The role of Dan Eldon was played by American actor Ben Schnetzer, star of the films “Warcraft” and “Pride”.