Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Buochs
Arnold Odermatt Swiss
Not on view
Arnold Odermatt likely never expected his photographs to find their way into a museum. For more than forty years, the Swiss traffic officer documented car crashes in a remote alpine province, recording evidence for court cases and insurance claims. But once the human drama of an accident had been cleared away—the victims removed and responders dispersed—Odermatt would make a few photographs just for himself. In these less evidentiary, more cerebral compositions (later published by his son), mangled guardrails and dented fenders assume a sculptural quality, suspending, if only for a moment, the scene’s certain trauma. Here, as a convertible cab brims with water, one could almost forget that it ever held anything else.
Due to rights restrictions, this image cannot be enlarged, viewed at full screen, or downloaded.
