The publication only managed to survive 3 issues and was heavily criticized during its lifetime. However, it has since been recognized for its profound and lasting effect on Japanese photography that would last throughout the 1970s and 80s. It is often credited with completely reinventing the Japanese approach to photography.
All three issues of Provoke appeared in The Open Book, a traveling exhibition that tracked "the history of the photographic medium in the twentieth century through printed images in book form.