Is it possible or even desirable to conceive a type of image studies without any object reference to historical object? What is the status of object-oriented knowledge at all in the face of the claim for truth made by the sciences? Are the great explanatory models hatched out by philosophers and physicists sufficient to cover the need for visual knowledge of today’s information societies? Is it necessary to consider the time-space grid extended to such a degree that nature becomes naked being, biosphere naked life and humanity naked existence? How much visual knowledge may tribes, language communities, cultures, nations, institutions, parties, associations, milieus and environments, families, generation-cohorts, taste- and interest groups require for themselves? And is the explicit knowledge of specialized learning less valuable than the speculative output of the new theory-based disciplines? Does the ›truth-knowledge‹ of these disciplines really go without any ›fact-knowledge‹, as they tend to suggest? And if so, of what good could a blind, non-iconic theory be to our visual cultures? The subsequent contribution traces running research lines and points out questions that may help to assess prevailing mindsets in German-speaking centres of excellence.