Shoot, Ask...and Run - Chris Stowers

Shoot, Ask ... and Run!" The advice given to aspiring British photographer Chris Stowers, at the start of his travels, has never seemed so valuable. Buffeted by tempestuous forces of both personal and international affairs, he flees from the Jakarta mafia through the jungles of Borneo, is tear-gassed by riot police in Manila, and crosses an imploding Soviet Union by train, only to be abducted by a group of heavily-armed Serb militia.

In these pages, recalled from diaries kept at the time, Stowers paints a harsh, humorous and very human picture of media life in Asia-and beyond-during the boom years of the early 1990's. Based in Hong Kong, in the dying days of both empire and analog photography, he finds himself constantly on the road, in trouble, and out of film. A natural-born observer and nomad, the question nonetheless arises: where is home?

-

"Amusing...very graphic, and evoke(s) what it was like to be a journalist there at that time." - Allan Little, BBC Balkans correspondent, 1991-1995

"The heartfelt adventures of a young man in the twilight of old media. Stowers is an immensely likeable companion, and his account of travel in the pre-digital age is both achingly nostalgic and beautiful." - John Ross, author of Taiwan in 100 Books

"A delight....just what a delight! Chris Stowers takes us a romp across the Asia of the 1980s and 1990s when the region was transforming itself into the Asian tigers. Stowers is a photojournalist and self-described nomad, and he has captured the time, the feel, and the smells especially of the out-of-the-way places with their crummy hotels and student flops. You will wish you were running alongside this peripatetic photojournalist." - Marty Petersen, author of City of Lost Souls