For more than 30 years Arnold Odermatt, now 89, worked in the Swiss police force, taking photographs of traffic accidents for use in incident reports. In the early 1990s, Odermatt’s son Urs, a film-maker, came across the photos and edited them into books and shows which have been exhibited all around the world.
The pictures capture the momentary serenity of an accident scene after the horror of the incident but before the rescue and recovery operation begins.The image below, taken in Buochs, Switzerland, in 1995 belongs to the series Karambolage (see slideshow below), which is currently on show at the Galerie Springer in Berlin.