Michael Diers devotes detailed individual analyses to current image phenomena in everyday life, politics, and art. Alongside painting, graphic art, and photography, film and video in particular come under discussion. The central concern of each study is to appreciate the images at length in their specific aesthetic, medial, and artistic qualities. Works by William Eggleston, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Alfred Hitchcock, and Pipilotti Rist, among others, are presented. On the basis of these exemplary analyses, a critical theory of the image grounded in art history is developed at the same time.