In 1971, the German government launched an anti-smoking campaign, which featured Will McBride's photographs. The campaign, titled "Zeig mal Will McBride" (Show me Will McBride), aimed to shock young people into realizing the dangers of smoking. The campaign used a series of provocative images, including a photograph of a man with a severe smoking-related illness.
However, in a landmark move, recent art scholarship has argued for the historical importance of "Zeig Mal!" In 2018, a censored, annotated edition was released by a small Berlin press, with black bars over the most explicit genitalia. Purists hated it. But it allowed the book to re-enter university libraries.