wonderful art

May 22, 2002 6:07 PM

wonderful art and an and engrossing story: dan eldon - worth a visit. agree? disagree?
posted by specialk420 (13 comments total)

Dan is a cousin of a friend of mine and so I have a copy of his really engrossing first book/journal that his famiy printed and it's wonderful. This website, while beautiful, makes it very difficult to figure out exactly who Dan was, or what the purpose of the site is, except to raise more money for the site, of course. If you knew nothing about Dan, this about page would not help you figure out who he was. This essay by his mom is a better starting point, but really buried deep in there.
posted by jessamyn at 6:16 PM on May 22, 2002

I got his first book, "the journey is the destination," as a present a few years ago, and I still look through it for inspiration. Truely tragic, I only wonder where he could've gone if he hadn't been killed.
posted by atom128 at 6:46 PM on May 22, 2002

jess.

wow. hmmm... is the first journal still in print?? title??
posted by specialk420 at 7:05 PM on May 22, 2002

The site moved my browser from one monitor to the other on my dual head system. That alone makes a site not worth a visit. Let me control my own browser please...

[spellchecking! sweet!]
posted by srboisvert at 7:27 PM on May 22, 2002

The in-print journal is called "The Journey Is the Destination : The Journals of Dan Eldon". It is a truly inspiring book not only for budding artiste/photographer/poet types but for anyone in general. This guy had so much talent, and the story behind his death is terrible.
posted by jeremias at 7:33 PM on May 22, 2002

Well, I'm with srboisvert. Any site that hijacks my browser isn't worth my time. Too bad that I might have missed some content, but stunts like that just make my blood boil.
posted by SallyW at 7:38 PM on May 22, 2002

This is one case where the Web truly does an injustice to the work. Run, don't walk, to pick up a print copy of The Journey is the Destination to really appreciate the astounding, life-affirming and tragic stories told by Dan Eldon's unique use of image and design. For me, this book raised the "art of seeing" to its highest possible point.
posted by skyboy at 9:31 PM on May 22, 2002

The content intrigued me. But I agree with Jessamyn. It is rather difficult to figure out from the site what Dan was all about. It was like getting a few tantalizing glimpses of something very interesting marred by ineffective design and sometimes mundane prose. Rather exasperating!
posted by justlooking at 10:04 PM on May 22, 2002

i guess as someone who already knew all about dan and the journey is the destination book i really really appreciated this site for its publication of whole journals allowing me to view the spreads and pages in context not only as excerpts in the book. so i wouldnt say its an injustice.
posted by c at 10:13 PM on May 22, 2002

The New York and beyond gallery has a number of really stunning pages; a lot of the earlier work was rather less gripping, though.

This makes me want to go and see Africa...
posted by kaibutsu at 4:40 AM on May 23, 2002

Definitely worth a visit, pop-up Flash windows or not. A tragic, but romantic figure. Very impressive paintings and photography (and painted photographs). I love real collage, that has got rough edges and glue smudges... Computers ruined it...
posted by fellorwaspushed at 7:42 AM on May 23, 2002

Screw it!

Next time put a warning that the site hijacks your browser.
posted by Qubit at 9:06 AM on May 23, 2002

I had heard about Dan Eldon before on Time magazine. Regardless of the site quibbles (which IMHO aren't so bad to make much noise about it), the sole idea of seeing spontaneous collages that could be considered (many of them) decent unintentional art, made by someone who perhaps had a premonition he will have a very short life and a violent death and therefore trying to immortalize every possible minute of it on his scrapbooks, plus living hard and intensely, well if that isn't moving enough I don't know what will be.

It really makes you want to see the printed version...
posted by betobeto at 11:18 AM on May 23, 2002