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EMMA Levine's college ambition was to have a good, safe, 9 to 5 job in a comfortable office, creating artwork for an advertising agency.

  At 23, she has been held prisoner by gun dealers, choked on tear gas fumes at the centre of a riot, slept in a brothel, been driven over land mines, and come face to face with machine-gun toting Khmer Rouge. But she has never worked for an ad agency.

  So one would naturally have expected Emma's photographic exhibition which opens in Hong Kong today to be packed with pictures taken during her most dangerous adventures.

  Not so. It's about cricket. Earlier this year she followed the test matches between India and England and was bowled over, not so much by the cricket, but by the fervour of the Indian crowds.

  She went on to photograph what was happening off the field during all three test matches in India and left for Sri Lanka to watch another test series.

  Once the cricket was finished in Sri Lanka, Emma was back in the thick of things, taking a local train from Colombo to Trincomalee, the fishing town smack bang in the middle of Sri Lanka's war zone, ''for a short break'', ignoring the warnings of both locals and hardened foreign correspondents.

  Luck seems to follow this north England lass and she managed to return to Hong Kong unscathed to scrape enough money together for her three-week exhibition of black and white prints at the Alliance Francaise gallery in North Point.

    She may be living on the bread-line, but Emma has banked a wealth of experiences, good and bad, during her travels of the past couple of years or so, often living on the very edge.

  Emma was studying for a degree in graphic art in Bradford, Yorkshire, when she took up photography more by accident than design.

  ''They had a small laboratory at the university and I was allowed to go in there during the summer holidays,'' she said. ''Suddenly I was more interested in photography than graphic art, but I stuck out the course.''   She spent three months photographing the goings-on at a small-time football club, Mansfield Town while still studying for her degree.

  ''I have three elder brothers, so I couldn't help but become interested in football and cricket when I was a child.

  ''It wasn't so much the football, but the crowds that drew my attention. I like to observe spectators. At a lower league club like Mansfield the crowds are small and you have lots of room to take good shots of spectators, from children to old men. They are a different type of spectator from the ones you get at the big league games.''   Last year she was in India, living in a back-street lodging house in Old Delhi, watching the World Cricket Cup on a television set which had seen better days.

  ''When India beat Pakistan, the whole of Old Delhi erupted. Firecrackers were going off everywhere. I knew I had to return to see live cricket in India and take pictures both inside and outside the grounds.'' Air India helped by sponsoring her.

  Emma is working part-time at a leading Hong Kong photograph agency to try to get some money together to continue her travels. ''It's ironical, but I now spend a lot of time looking at the photographs of others, not my own,'' she said.

  She hopes to go on travelling soon to the Middle East. She wants to get into the minds of Muslim women in Yemen, Iran, Syria and Jordan.

  ''These are male-dominated countries and I want to write a book documenting with photographs Muslim society through the eyes of Muslim women.''   It will not be easy, she is the first to admit. Male Muslim fundamentalists are unlikely to welcome this kind of intrusion. But Emma has a good track record of overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds, which include a few hair-raising experiences in other Muslim countries, including Turkey, Morocco and Pakistan.

  When she graduated nearly three years ago, she went to Transylvania in Romania to document through photography the work of a charity group.

  ''One day I was flung into the middle of riots in Bucharest,'' said Emma. ''The police were firing tear-gas, and I started to take photographs.

  ''My eyes were stinging, but I was not afraid. I was excited. I knew then that I would never become a graphic designer. I wanted to become a professional photographer.''   Two years ago she started travelling in earnest on a shoestring budget, and has not returned to England since. She went to Vietnam and hitched her way into Cambodia on the back of a motor bike.

  ''In Phnom Penh I was told that refugees had started to stream back in the north from Thailand. I wanted to be there to get photographs.

  ''I hitched a lift up with local people. The physical discomfort was incredible. There were no roads, only dust tracks.

  ''We were stopped by Khmer Rouge and they pointed their machine guns at us. I thought: 'This is it. I'm going to die'. But they only wanted money.

  ''For a small payment we were allowed to continue. This happened many times on that journey. I had nowhere to stay, and I could not afford a good quality hotel. The people in a village put me up - in a brothel.''   UN personnel took pity on her and sneaked her into their quarters where she could wash, rest and eat. And she got her pictures.

  But not until she had narrowly escaped death when a UN driver who gave her a lift took a short cut off the track and crossed an area which was land-mined. He was severely dealt with by officers in the convoy.

  Emma sent the pictures to England and she reached the finals of a contest organised by a British national newspaper.

  Then she hitched back to Vietnam and made her way to the Philippines and then Hong Kong for a short period before travelling in China and into Pakistan through the stunningly beautiful Karakoram.

  ''I had learnt a lot by then about Muslims,'' said Emma. ''In Morocco I had worn shorts and a tee-shirt and wondered why I had such a hard time, fending off men all the time.

  ''Unfortunately, a lot of westerners don't learn about the customs of countries before they visit, and experience problems because of this.

  ''Even though I followed a more conservative code of dress I still got hassled a lot in Pakistan, with men trying to grope me, but I also experienced a lot of hospitality.''   She arrived in Peshawar, the wild town where gun-dealing is a way of life, exhausted and with a broken back-pack.

  ''I was just about ready to pack it all in. I knew nothing about Peshawar. A man with broken English took me into his gun shop and told me, ironically, 'This city is too dangerous for you' and that I should stay in the house they reserved for their clients, gun-smugglers.

  ''I was a prisoner. They gave me a room with a servant, but he would not let me leave the building. Eventually I escaped, but they caught up with me and scolded me, saying they were only concerned for my welfare.''   Emma wanted to get into nearby Afghanistan, and the gun dealers said they would help her. She would have to dress as a Muslim woman and pretend she was deaf and dumb. The gun-runners would take her across the border in their truck.

  ''I came to my senses, dropped the idea and got out of Peshawar. I could have just disappeared, been kidnapped or anything. No one would have been able to trace me.''   So surely Emma would be pleased to be back in Hong Kong, relatively safe and sophisticated?   Unfortunately, she has few good words for us. ''Hong Kong is the most boring place I have been in. It has no soul.''   She said that in spite of receiving many promises of sponsorship for her exhibition, she has received none, and has spent all her money. But she has been given a free room on a temporary basis by sympathisers.

  Emma has been to India three times. She was inspired by the film Salaam Bombay. In India she met up with a number of British journalists who were staying in top hotels while they covered the cricket for their newspapers.

  ''They would complain of trivial inconveniences like not being able to get a certain beer,'' said Emma. ''I didn't tell them that there were rats in my bathroom.''   Emma hasn't seen her parents for two years, and they fret. But she said she cannot bear the thought of living in England again with a steady job. For her, the journey has just begun.



Opening the shutter on a shady side