Active through his late nineties, Naar had a multifaceted career as an intelligence officer in World War II; a globe-trotting marketing executive during the postwar years; and an environmentalist, with 12 published books to his credit.

Thanks to prior experience in the Officers' Training Corps at Mill Hill, he would spend the next six years on intelligence work, including service with the British Special Operations Executive, on clandestine assignments that took him through the Middle East and Italy.

Through the 1950s, armed with a Super Ikonta rangefinder camera[2] and later a Praktica single-lens reflex, Naar had been developing his eye as a "weekend" photographer, roving his Greenwich Village neighborhood and seeking out subject matter while on foreign corporate assignments.

Within the span of a few years, Naar had not only transformed himself into a professional photographer,[7] but was in demand as a contributor to major publications like The New York Times, The Saturday Evening Post, Vogue, Fortune, Elle, and Schöner Wohnen.

Other subjects over the years included Luis Barragán, Marcel Breuer, Christo, Alexander Liberman, Heinz Mack, Marino Marini, Henry Moore, Barnett Newman, Saul Steinberg, and Günther Uecker.

[1] Featuring an introduction by novelist Norman Mailer, the controversial collection would become "like a bible to later graffiti artists," in the words of Brian Wallis, chief curator at New York's International Center of Photography.

Jacques Cousteau wrote the introduction to Naar's 1973 book, Design for a Limited Planet, which featured interviews and photographs with pioneers of solar energy in the American Southwest and sold over 100,000 copies.