One of the most exciting photographic oeuvres of recent years has emerged from a forgotten archive.

Some photographers build a career step by step. Others disappear almost completely from view, until their work resurfaces years later. John Baer (1920–1994) belongs to the latter category. His name may not immediately ring a bell with many photography enthusiasts, but John Baer: The Extraordinary Ordinary: A Memoir in Photographs, 1945–1954 shows that the work of a remarkable photographer has been rediscovered here.

Stepping up as a new contemporary to Vivian Meier and Garry Winogrand, Baer’s photographs depict a hopeful world rebuilding and readjusting to a new order following one of the deadliest wars in human history…

“John Baer grabbed a Leica from a captured German soldier in 1945. Nearly 50 years later, his son found the negatives – which were some of the best postwar street photographs ever.”

“Baer’s collection is a moving portrait of Europe and New York City in the decade after WWII. Now, almost a century on, a debut book demonstrates his gift for catching people in the most unguarded and vulnerable moments of their lives – at work, at rest, at play. John Baer: The Extraordinary Ordinary highlights a world both familiar and forever changed.”

Featuring scenes and people from the New York City of the early 1950s, the photos … document a "rich and intense time in world history."

There are also photos that "capture a world struggling to understand itself following years of war and political realignment" from the "Postwar Europe" of the late 1940s and early 1950s.