The image is just aesthetics; he is looking for a permeation of the souls. The camera snaps to capture the instant in time when the attitude is exposed. Beneath it is the inscription " . . . and so it becomes a message in a bottle/only to be understood by the right spectator/by the appropriate soul/she's out there, I am here."

Juan Nino's exhibit, Sartrean Nostalgias of a Piscean Existentialist, is a tribute to the artist's inspiration, "to work with a woman—unknown to me—as a model and throughout the shooting sessions, discover her soul and capture it in pictures."

Nine of Nino's prints are on display in the Art Alley at the HUB-Robeson Center through Nov. 4. The artist has his black-and-white prints in a sequential order, complemented by eight of his own writings, artistic images themselves.

Born in Colombia, Nino was studying for an undergraduate degree in engineering at the Universidad de Los Andes when his studies were interrupted by a year of compulsory service in the Colombian military. Afterward he said he found photography to "keep the safe balance between engineering and passion." Now pursuing his doctorate in Material Science and Engineering at Penn State, he continues to express his philosophical and artistic side in photography.

None of the women Nino photographs are models. While he calls his reasoning indescribable, he explains that he is attracted by a physically expressed attitude that his camera can capture and interpret. Not the perfect image, but the perfect instant. Often he will photograph just the eyes. Afterward, Nino adds random brushes to the prints, creating an inimitable effect, he said.

"Sometimes you will get the right picture, but not the right soul," Nino said. "The painting is an interpretation."

Ideally it can result in Nino's ultimate critique, "when a model looks at her picture and says she sees me." This is the permeation of the souls that Nino feels is so important in his work, a picture that has assimilated both the souls of the subject and photographer, encapsulating them.