Over the course of the past year, Ou has produced a series of fourteen portraits of photographers absorbed in the act of reading Ludwig Wittgenstein’s 1921 book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The portraits were made in various locations in the world, and depict the subjects in fixed moments in time, each engaging with a specific philosophical proposition in the text.

Arthur Ou has exhibited internationally, most recently in “Images that Speak” at the Presentation House in Vancouver, Canada, “The Material Image” at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, and “One Torino,” in Turin, Italy. His work will be featured in the upcoming new book, The Beauty of a Social Problem: Photography, Autonomy, Economy (University of Chicago Press, June 2015), by Walter Benn Michaels.