The topic of this IMAGE volume ›image and modern age‹ focusses on the pragmatic side of image science. It scouts out the base of our image understanding which is developed by the concrete use of the image primarily in the social interaction. It is about the question whether and how far modern age-understood as ›classic modern age‹ which describes the period from the end of the 19th to the middle of the 20th century – not only stamped its images but also to what extend those images made modern age possible and still support cultural development. In this case images woudn’t be media only but social tools.

Out of this two questions arise for image science: How does image understanding come into being at the individual and which parameters support its development? How do specific collectives develop specific images forms and use them to constitute their unity or their distinction? This volume deals with the question whether images and the knowledge about them are irreplaceable for the understanding of the modern age understood as both an individual and a collective construction of a period.