"Stanssrad, 1958"

Odermatt archive: #650

gelatin silver print (analogue)

signed, dated, titled, numbered (pencil) on verso

When Arnold Odermatt began his service at the cantonal police Nidwalden in 1948, policemen had to add drawings of the accident scene or the course of events to their rapports. Already on his second day at work Odermatt started to add photographs to his reports. As drawing to scale was not every policeman’s cup of tea the new colleague was called often in case a hay cart and a car crashed in one of the eleven villages of Nidwalden or a convertible raced into the lake. In no time, Odermatt integrated his hobby to his professional life. When Nehru, Prime Minister of India at the time, came to Switzerland three years later, Odermatt met the famous Magnum photographer Werner Bischof: the policeman should guard the President, Bischof wanted to photograph him und gave his colleague in uniform the advice to make use of the possibilities of his job: as a police man he would see motifs that are inaccessible for others. Odermatt followed the advice but he never was interested in spectacular events. Crashes he captured often were like objective, distant still lifes of the automobile era. Even though there must have been many accident victims around Lake Lucerne in the 50s and 60s, there are no humans visible in the pictures. They only capture the terrible consequences of acceleration out of control for dead matter like metal, glass and rubber. Moreover, the work of Odermatt’s colleagues is shown, securing the accident site, measuring skid marks, salvaging wrecks. When the cantonal police faced recruitment problems in the 1960s, Odermatt started to stage the daily routine of his colleagues. His pictures should show the work of the cantonal police as attractive and diverse as possible – publicity for the police. Odermatt took pictures from his colleagues as dashing snipers and motorcycle acrobats, he shows them in the water, on shore and in the air, skiing and in a motorboat, as mountain troops as well as setting radar speed traps on the motorway. A lot seems unintentionally comic today, others, like the sight of wooden telexes or hand-forged looking office telephone systems of the 60s and 70s, are just touching or astonishing. When Arnold Odermatt left the police service in 1990, he was lieutenant colonel, chief of the traffic police and vice commander of the Nidwalden cantonal police. This is no small thing, but things even got better. Three years later his pictures were displayed for the first time, 2001 they were exhibited at the Venice Biennale.
(Hubert Spiegel, FAZ, 21.4.2007/ translation)