At the end of World War II, John Baer acquired a Leica camera from a captured German soldier. His first pictures were of U.S. soldiers in occupied Germany, many taken in Wetzlar, home to Leica’s headquarters.

Soon after his return to the United States, John and his wife, Louise, settled in New York City. In 1950, they sublet their East Village apartment and returned to a turbulent Europe.

In France the Communists were the largest political party and de Gaulle, now attempting a political comeback, was fiercely anti-communist. Spain remained under the thumb of Franco’s dictatorship. Germany, now divided between East and West, lurched toward the future and became a focal point of the Cold War.

John’s photographs capture a world struggling to understand itself following years of war and political realignment.