I have been searching all day for this and it seems that there is no solution currently available from the chromedriver implementation for python.
how do you set spe
This is what works with latest chromedriver versions from at least 2.15 to the current version 2.20:
chrome_options = Options()
chrome_options.add_experimental_option( "prefs", {'profile.managed_default_content_settings.images': 2})
chrome = webdriver.Chrome('/path/to/chromedriver',chrome_options=chrome_options)
chrome.get("https://google.com")