I want to address myself within this article to what I consider to be an unbridged gap within the Women's Movement between an awareness of the role of ideology in visual representations of women in our oppression and the level of critical and theoretical analysis developed by a small number of largely professionally involved women. The political interest in images is evidenced by the frequency with which courses are set up under the misleading title 'Images of Women' in a variety of educational establishments and at women's studies conferences. The theoretical analysis is more specialized and therefore only appears in small distribution journals of small study groups. I have found myself working within both camps and I would like here both to examine the practical problems of bridging this gap without failing to incorporate the important theoretical issues and also to explore some of those issues without losing sight of their practical exercise in teaching. Many of the points I shall raise were originally developed by the collective work of a group of women over a long period, collecting images and experimenting in different teaching situations. Limitations of space do not allow for a full elaboration of issues, which are both complex and part of a much wider study of women and representations. For instance I cannot acknowledge properly within this article the full implications of the differences of media and qualities of photographs to be used as illustrations to the argument. Instead I shall try to outline the main points of our analysis and show certain images which we have found useful in teaching in this area.