A line head, includes a plurality of short heads, each of which has an array of recording elements arranged in one direction, disposed in the direction of arrangement, wherein the short heads that are adjacent to each other in the direction of arrangement are located at a different position in a direction normal to the direction of arrangement as well as an interval between a recording element of one of said two short heads and a recording element of the other short head, which two elements are adjacent to each other in said direction of arrangement, is set equal to or less than the proper arrangement pitch of the recording elements when viewed from the auxiliary scanning direction. Further, when an image is scanned and recorded using this line head, the driving of the recording elements are controlled according to the proper arrangement pitch of the recording elements and the interval as above in the joint region of two short heads adjacent to each other. With this arrangement, the short heads can easily be arranged and put into registration with each other, whereby a manufacturing process can be simplified, the line head can be fabricated at low cost, and further an image recording method capable of recording an image of high quality by means of this line head can be provided.