To study the global morphology of the galaxy distribution in our local neighbourhood we calculate the Minkowski functionals for a sequence of volume limited samples within a sphere of 8 Mpc centred on our galaxy .
The well known strong clustering of the galaxies and the dominance of voids and coherent structures on larger scales is clearly visible in the Minkowski functionals .
The morphology of the galaxy distribution changes with the limiting absolute magnitude .
The samples , encompassing the more luminous galaxies , show emptier voids and more pronounced coherent structures .
Indeed there is a prominent peak in the luminosity function of isolated galaxies for M _ { B } \approx - 14 , which at least partly explains these morphological changes .
We compare with halo samples from a \Lambda CDM simulation .
Special care was taken to reproduce the observed local neighbourhood as well as the observed luminosity function in these mock samples .
All in all the mock samples render the global morphology of the galaxy distribution quite well .
However the detailed morphological analysis reveals that real galaxies cluster stronger , the observed voids are emptier and the structures are more pronounced compared to the mock samples from the \Lambda CDM simulation .