Meine Welt : Photographien = Photographs 1939-1993

Poetics of Police Photography

With the precision of a chronicler, the policeman Arnold Odermatt has documented his everyday life as a civil servant for 40 years, on the job and in private, in rural Switzerland. He reports the events with which he is faced in his everyday duty as a police officer, which was something very unusual. As opposed to many spectacular pictures of catastrophes, he records and documents small, apparently insignificant occurrences. At the same time, the pictures, with their documentary style, also capture situations that often appear unintentionally funny-ironic.

The photographer presents a panorama of happenings that we try to avoid under all circumstances yet that strangely fascinates us. In a second section, Odermatt gives us an insight into his private everyday life. He uses the same police-style objectivity, which is not devoid of feelings, to document the more personal life. source: www.benteli.ch