Street Photography Magazine

by Ashley Riffo

John Baer: What We Leave Behind

When Andrew [John’s son] was about seven, his father brought home a German friend named Kurt. Andrew learned that Kurt had served in the German army. For a child raised in the immediate aftermath of World War II, the revelation was a bit jarring. After all, weren’t Germans the enemy? But Andrew remembers his father telling him, “If I’d been born in Germany, I probably would have been in the German army too. That’s just the way it was.” That ability to see the person before the stereotype seems to run through John’s photographs.

Soldiers on a French Train, 1945

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