  (Abbrev.) This paper prepares a series of papers analysing the Intermediate
MAss Galaxy Evolution Sequence (IMAGES) up to z=1. Intermediate mass galaxies
(MJ <=-20.3) are selected from the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) for which we
identify a serious lack of spectroscopically determined redshifts..... We have
spectroscopically identified 691 objects including 580 gal., 7 QSOs, and 104
stars. This study provides 531 new redshifts in the CDFS. It confirms the
presence of several large scale structures in the CDFS. To test the impact of
these structures in the GOODS-South field, we ... compare the evolution of
rest-frame U, B, V and K galaxy luminosity densities to that derived from the
CFRS. The CDFS field shows a significant excess of luminosity densities in the
z=0.5-0.75 range, which increases with the wavelength, reaching up to 0.5 dex
at 2.1 um. Stellar mass and specific star formation evolutions might be
significantly affected by the presence of the peculiar large scale structures
at z= 0.668 and at z= 0.735, that contain a significant excess of evolved,
massive galaxies when compared to other fields. This leads to a clear warning
to results based on the CDFS/GOODS South fields, especially those related to
the evolution of red luminosity densities, i.e. stellar mass density and
specific star formation rate. Photometric redshift techniques, when applied to
that field, are producing quantities which are apparently less affected by
cosmic variance (0.25 dex at 2.1 um), however at the cost of the difficulty in
disentangling between evolutionary and cosmic variance effects.
