Daren

Excellent - I really enjoyed this memoir from a young British traveller who is starting out on his photography career. Stowers picks up the story in 1988 in Singapore, after a sea journey in a Bugis spice ship (around which his first book is based), when he is aged 20. Initially required to teach English to build up some money to spend on photography equipment and travel he soon concludes that he needs to ditch the other work and commit to the nomadic life of a freelance photographer.

While the book is largely linear in timeline, there are diversions back to previous travels to fill in gaps in the direction Stowers' life takes and to provide a bit of back story. I found the writing and storyline really engaging and immersive, the pace was good all the way through and the progress he made in his career trajectory and decisions in his travel all came across as legitimate and realistic. I was impressed with the writing and editing, and though it was a long book (470 pages) it kept me enthusiastically reading.

Stower's story takes the reading to an array of interesting locations and situations as Stowers' visits place to speculatively take photographs and pen articles or is commissioned to do so. While based in Singapore initially, hen Hong Kong for the majority of his time, he covers local events but more often to wide spread spots such as Pakistan, Indonesia (various locations), Borneo (Indonesian and Malaysian), Brunei, the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan. He covers lots of things from dramatic events, political disturbances and captures pictures of prominent people.

Eventually he considers he needs to head 'home' to the UK. Like I did when I was living in Ireland, he decided to make the longest journey home that he could plan, and ended up travelling a lot of the route I took in reverse. Notwithstanding the fact he hopped about a bit to chase events, Stowers started in Hong Kong, travelled to China, Mongolia, Russia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Hungary, Germany, Netherlands and finally to the UK arriving in 1992. (Mine started in Lithuania, then Latvia, Russia, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia to Singapore, then a short visit to Melbourne before home to NZ).

The blurb mentions a few of his adventures, so me touching on those doesn't seem like spoilers, such as 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. There was literally something going in each short chapter (again pointing the engaging writing and editing to keep the story moving at pace) and the regular change of location, some of which I am familiar with, only increased the appeal for me. Likewise I though Stowers explained the critical thought processes in his decision making, some of which were pivotal in his success in building relationships with employers / those who will purchase his photographs, many of which go into stock photo libraries and are purchased where relevant photographs are used for current articles.

Obviously the book contains a number of Stowers photos (which are obviously good!) but also some of the magazine covers on which his work is featured and numerous newspapers, but most of the photos are more candid featuring people in the story who he relied on to move is progress forward.

The title of the book comes from advice offered to him by a couple of much more experienced photographers to "shoot first, then ask permission. And when that fails, run!"

A digital copy of this book was provided to me by Earnshaw Books, the publisher to read and review.

5 stars