Shoot, Ask…and Run

“Shoot, Ask … and Run!” The advice given 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?