This editorial examines photography and film as active instruments in the understanding, critique and preservation of modern and contemporary architecture, rather than as merely illustrative records. Centred on a series of contributions concerning construction, urban planning, housing, industrial heritage and landscape care, it argues that visual documentation shapes architectural knowledge by revealing processes, spatial relations, social transformations and ecological impacts that are often inaccessible through textual or ground-level observation alone. The discussion begins with photographs of Mogens Lassen’s Ordrupvej 70 housing project, where images of the Systemhuset steel formwork system expose the technical innovation and architect-engineer collaboration underlying Danish Functionalism. It then considers Tibor Farkas’s aerial photography of Lake Balaton, showing how the elevated view evolved from a compositional planning tool into a means of detecting environmental degradation and supporting landscape rehabilitation. The essay further analyses photographic comparisons of two modern public housing projects in Caracas, demonstrating how images register the tension between state-sponsored modernist ideals and the informal adaptations of everyday urban life. Bernd and Hilla Becher’s typological records of industrial structures are presented as evidence of photography’s capacity to transform obsolete infrastructures into objects of cultural memory and heritage value. Finally, the International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens is discussed as a model in which documentary film and professional photography operate as research methods for interpreting complex, inhabited landscapes. Across these case studies, the essay shows that visual media do more than freeze time: they produce critical perspectives on construction, territory, memory and repair. By connecting technological experiment, aerial survey, social occupation, industrial decline and landscape stewardship, it foregrounds the image as both evidence and argument, across varied historical, political, cultural and environmental contexts. Photography and film therefore emerge as constitutive components of architectural inquiry, enabling a more rigorous and socially responsive engagement with the legacy of modernity.