European Soliloquy by Sara Tin Asia One, HK$175 Writing in the foreword to Sara Tin's book of photographic recollections of her travels through Europe, James Kenny, an associate professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, compares travelling with dreaming. He asks whether life is a journey or a dream and suggests that for an artist it is often both. 'If every journey begins, as the sage suggests, with a single step,' he writes, 'then Sara's journey begins with a single photograph. Her photographs are a visual diary of her journey.' Tin, who lists her interests other than photography as Chinese literature, European culture and contemporary dance, studied journalism at the Chinese University before setting off to study arts and intercultural studies in Britain. During this period she 'wandered through Europe to capture poetic beauty', as she puts it. Her journey took her through 20 cities and European Soliloquy - A Memory in Glass includes travel memoirs and observations in prose and poetry in Chinese and English. Many of the photographs carry captions that are more evocative than descriptive. A shot of a graffiti-covered bench in Budapest, for example, is saved from being an example of the neophyte photographer's cliche by a poetic caption: Waiting is the description, followed by 'An on/off relationship was a bigger torture than loneliness'. A picture of the London Underground, titled Frozen in Time, offers the chance for self-reflection: 'I love the contrast between motion and stillness. If only I could revisit my past, frozen in time, and take out what have become the biggest regrets of my life,' she writes. With chapters titled 'stillness, momentum, nature, people, fluttering/carefree, light and shadow, architecture, tree and sky, raw art and afterthought' it becomes clear Tin's travels are indeed as much about dream as they are about the journey itself. Although there is a handful of arresting shots in the book, such as Angel's Face, the superimposition of a woman's face on Austrian terrain, we don't learn much about the cities; most of the images work best because European Soliloquy is more about poetry than photography. A poignant example is what would normally be an uninteresting shot of a pool of water with the photographer in silhouette. Again the words save the day. Searching for Myself has the explanation: 'Once I was on a quest for a puddle in a street of my hometown in order to take a look at my true self. But then the water was murky and the reflection of the sky sombre. Today, the image appeared in Prague.' Tin, who is in her 20s, still has a long way to go in life's journey, but this book augurs well for the future.