Once upon a time there was a Swiss police officer named Arnold Odermatt, whose photographic work, long ignored, received international attention even though its author was past retirement age. Born in 1925 in the canton of Nidwalden, into a family of eleven children whose father was a forester, Arnold Odermatt first completed an apprenticeship as a baker and pastry chef. An allergy, however, took him away from his initial profession and he entered, somewhat by chance, into the cantonal police, with whom he spent the next forty years. […] At ten years old, Arnold Odermatt won a camera in a competition, which gradually led him to develop, as an autodidact, a photographic practice that could be described as passionate. He took his twin-lens Rolleiflex with him everywhere and photographed the people and landscapes of his region, and later his wife and children. He also integrated his photographic practice into his daily professional life by documenting road accidents, which were very numerous at that time.