On a snow-covered Alpine roadway, tire tracks veer from the worn ruts and continue down a slope. They disappear before abruptly re-emerging at a tree, where the fated vehicle lies on its back, wheels to the sky, with the silhouettes of two bystanders near the wreckage. On closer scrutiny, what appears to be a perfunctory archival accident photo adopts qualities of fine-art photography: intersecting planes, rich grays and a pervasive sense of downward motion, as if the landscape would, if allowed, slide out of frame.  The shot, one of dozens on display at New York’s Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte gallery, was taken in 1972 by Arnold Odermatt, the official police photographer of Nidwalden, Switzerland. From 1948 until his 1990 retirement, Mr. Odermatt documented with a master lensman’s eye the aftermath of vehicular accidents within his canton — that is, his state within the federal state of Switzerland. His talent was later recognized by a Swiss curator, Harald Szeemann, who secured Mr. Odermatt’s oeuvre a showing at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001.  Mr. Odermatt’s approach reveals much about his professional temperament — as a policeman and photographer. He would shoot an initial round for police and insurance purposes, and when the injured or killed were cleared from the scene, he would shoot another round for himself.  A viewer at Leo Koenig might register a lingering pathos for the victims, or regard only the vehicular debris and its place within the accident’s surrounding landscape, be it a modern four-lane highway or a Swiss mountain village. Mr. Odermatt’s eye does not editorialize. It does, however, understand how to frame absurdity. A Cadillac Eldorado tips precariously from a fenced-in overpass in one nighttime shot, its finned rump never looking more amphibian. A motor boat lists across two lanes of blacktop, dwarfing an oncoming Fiat yet looking all the more impotent for it.  According to Paul Laster at Flavorwire, Mr. Odermatt, 85, “still displays an uncanny view of man’s favorite mode of transportation.”  “Arnold Odermatt: Works” is on view at Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte through Sept. 10, 2010, projekte.leokoenig.com.
Arnold Odermatt, a police photographer in Switzerland, photographed automobile accidents after the emergency vehicles had left, returning the landscape to an odd quiet. His photos are on display at Leo Koenig Inc. Projekte in Manhattan.