"Just the Facts, Maam...

...oh, and can you turn a little more toward the sun"?
This is a fascinationg story about a man who turned the mundane into something more. A policeman who documented his work, his environment and the people in and around his life. The result... a quiet study of images that are truly unique.

Washington University - News & Information: "Odermatt was the first officer in Switzerland to begin documenting these tragic scenes on film, creating two distinct bodies of work. Setting his tripod on the roof of a police van, he first shot a series of straightforward, documentary images to accompany accident reports and on-site police drawings. Hours later, when onlookers had gone and most traces of violence had been cleared away, he returned to make a final, more highly aestheticized portrait of the wrecked vehicles.

Devoid of blood or victims, presented in crisp black-and-white, these latter images stand in marked contrast both to earlier 'crime photography' -- Weegee's crowded tenement scenes of the 1930s and 40s, for example -- and to works by contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, whose acidly colored 'car crash' paintings mimicked the garish sensationalism of tabloid scandal sheets. "

Images: Here, and here, and here.