An examination of the effects of the visual images of paintings, films and photography in the author's life was undertaken to demonstrate their significance in forming tastes, values, and background knowledge. This inquiry was conducted in the form of fourteen essays, autobiographical in nature, which explore the life of images encountered as a child and as an adult, in and out of school. The essays examined the first influences of family members and their tastes in film, the western film genre, and the role of women in films of the thirties and forties. The essays continue with the subject of images supplied by formal education, and those that were excluded, an examination of Chinese painting, and the implications of Paleolithic cave paintings. Adult experiences with images are considered in essays on photography, foreign films, modern painting, and films distinguished by extraordinary imagination. The influence of the life of images was shown to inform the teaching practice of the author in essays on the subject of paintings used in the classroom, in the possibility of building background knowledge in United States history with theatrical film, and one in which new technology is explored as a rather unlimited supply of images, to both entice and aid students.