“Shoot, Ask ... and Run!” – Photographing Asia with 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 the 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 1990s. 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 arises: where is home?

Chris Stowers left England in 1987 fresh out of high school, clutching a one-way ticket to Karachi. He has lived in Asia ever since. For ten years before the 1997 handover to China he was based in Hong Kong where he was a photographer for Asiaweek magazine.

His love of photography began right at the start, hanging out with impoverished freelance photojournalists in war-torn Peshawar, Pakistan, where he was – fleetingly – Official Poet of The Frontier Post.

He joined the prestigious Panos Pictures Photo Agency in 1992. Photography assignments and wanderlust have taken Chris to well over 70 countries, so far, and his work has appeared in all manner of publications, including Time, Newsweek, The Economist, Forbes, Businessweek, National Geographic Traveller and The New York Times.

He has photographed numerous guidebooks for Insight Guides and Dorling Kindersley, is co-author of the Insight Guide's book of Travel Photography, and has hosted several TV travel documentaries.

His newly released book ‘Shoot, Ask…and Run!’ is the second in his on-going series of travel memoirs published by Earnshaw Books.

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