Look. From Max Winter's social reportage to the artistic dismantling of photographic objectivity

In Wall Newspaper #61, historian Fritz Kallinger examines the emergence of social reportage in early 20th-century Vienna and its central role in the development of critical, independent journalism. Wall Newspaper #61 takes a look at the early 20th century and links it to today's questions of media credibility. Kallinger shows how journalistic pioneers such as Max Winter established journalism as a social control mechanism through the systematic documentation of social injustices. Photographs by Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel from their influential photo book Evidence (1977) raise questions about the truthfulness of visual information and documentary evidence.

The art project Evidence is a milestone in conceptual art and appropriation art. Evidence questions the understanding of objectivity by removing seemingly neutral documentary photographs from institutional archives from their context, thus revealing their ambiguity. In the age of digital image processing, AI and disinformation, Evidence proves to be highly topical: it makes it clear that images are no longer clear-cut evidence, but must be read critically and questioned.