The first pictures appeared hundreds of thousands of years ago, well before language and writing were invented. But the discipline of image research only emerged at the end of the 20th century. Gottfried Boehm, Professor of Modern Art History at Basel University, leads the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) project entitled "Iconic Criticism – the Analysis of Image Processes". This research group explores the power of images, and sets out explain their grammar and syntax.