Millions of images are now taken every moment. Photos snapped on smartphones, some cherished, some posted, but most quickly forgotten. And then there are those powerful images that seem to capture everything important in a moment. Some can even be life-changing.
But what would photographers choose as their favourite photographs from their own vast archives?
As the spectre of AI haunts contemporary image making, these photographs show how much the lens still matters.
Alen MacWeeneyWhite Horse, Donegal, 1965 from W.B. Yeats series
Alen MacWeeney, White Horse, Donegal, 1965 from W.B. Yeats series.
Looking for a way to return and photograph in Ireland after moving to New York in 1964, I was sitting around the kitchen table with my friends Artelia and Henry. Henry noted it would be the centenary of W.B. Yeats the following year. The idea gripped us – we’d go there, I’d photograph, and we would make a book about the sources of Yeats’s poetry. With no thoughts of interpreting his verse ever in mind, I would photograph the kinds of people, animals, landscape and places that inhabited his poetry: Ireland, after all, hadn’t changed all that much from Yeats’s time by then.
With an unexpected assignment, a family loan, free accommodation in my parents’ flat, the use of the family car and a promise of three pages in Harper’s Bazaar magazine, we flew to Dublin, escaping the suffocating heat of New York in a small apartment without air conditioning.
We drove to Donegal, though Sligo was our primary destination, being central to Yeats’s life and having his burial site in Drumcliffe churchyard. In Donegal, grazing by the roadside was a beautiful white horse. A symbol or token from folklore, it stood still as a statue made of marble. I stopped the car, got out with my new Rolleiflex camera and took a roll of 12 photographs. The horse turned his head, probably irritated by an insect, but this movement enhanced the mythic quality.
Harper’s Bazaar published the image in September 1965.
Dublin-born Alen MacWeeney became a press photographer with The Irish Times at 16, before becoming assistant to Richard Avedon. Based in New York, he is today one of the world’s leading photographers. A major survey of his work, Anthology, is published by Cork University Press in October, and he will have an exhibition at Photo Museum Ireland in December. alenmacweeney.com @alenmacweeney
Rich GilliganBruce Kelliher, Kenmare, Co Kerry, 2000
Rich Gilligan, Bruce Kelliher, Kenmare, Co. Kerry, 2000.
This photograph shows one of my closest friends, Bruce Kelliher, skateboarding down a bridge in Kenmare, Co Kerry, in 2000. It was the first photo I ever had published, running as a double-page spread in the April 2001 issue of SLAP magazine from San Francisco. Having grown up in a pre-internet era I was completely obsessed with skate magazines, so the fact that this was published in a legit global skate publication was a huge deal for both myself and Bruce.
The only place that actually sold SLAP in Dublin at that time was the Tower Records on Wicklow Street, so for weeks I would go in after work and check daily if it had arrived, harassing disgruntled staff members to check the boxes. And then one day it was there, and I bought up all 10 copies so nobody else apart from our close friends and family actually saw it. The excitement was next level. Seeing my work in print alongside photographers and skaters I’d idolised for years was a life-changing experience.
This opened up the doors of possibility for us both in ways we couldn’t fully grasp back then. Bruce went on to get sponsored and became one of the best-known Irish skaters internationally. Wherever he went, people remembered him not just for his ability on his board, but also for how he navigated the world and the people he met along the way. Bruce was a positive force of nature unlike anyone I’ve ever encountered. He sadly died in early 2022 and is missed by many. His legacy lives on.
Rich Gilligan is an artist based in Co Wicklow, taking photographs for over 30 years. His portraits have been published in Time, iD, The New York Times, Dazed & Confused, and he has worked on campaigns for Carhartt WIP, Adidas Originals and Rough Trade Records. His exhibition, Earth Tourist is at Segotia Gallery until September 18th. richgilligan.com @richgilligan
Agata StoinskaEchoes of a Dream: Seed, 2024
Agata Stoinska, The Seed, from Echoes of
a Dream, Dublin, 2024
This self portrait was taken at a moment when I was saying goodbye to a place that shaped more than 15 years of my life. It was the first image of what would become the series Echoes of a Dream. The rest of the series was shot digitally, but this is the only one I took on film. It would be a year before I developed the negative, so I didn’t quite remember what I had captured.
The photograph was made during the final days of packing up D-Light Studios, the artist-led space I had founded in Dublin in 2008, transforming a derelict warehouse into a creative home for the hundreds of artists, creatives and people who become part of its community. In October 2023 we received an eviction note, and after months of collective effort to keep it alive, we had to face the reality that there was no longer a way to save it. The time had come to dismantle what we had built.
The final days were filled both with shared activity and quiet personal reflection. While friends and neighbours were clearing different parts of the building, I found a moment of quiet amongst the emptying rooms, surrounded by half packed boxes. The loss of D-Light brought with it another realisation – that I had perhaps never fully allowed myself to inhabit this space as an artist – I had put too much of myself to supporting everyone else’s creative practice.
This became my last chance to claim a movement within this space for my own creative reflection, and I found myself questioning whether I had just been a caretaker, whether D-Light had been my salvation or my prison.
In this image I am holding a monstera, a favourite plant I had grown from a tiny cutting. Only when I lifted it in front of the camera did I realise how much “she” had grown, her leaves now so large they completely obscured my face. I felt her weight against my body, the pot resting, like the belly of a pregnant woman.
What continues to move me about this photograph is its ambiguity. I am hidden and present, holding something I have raised, while remaining behind it, supporting its weight. Today, the building no longer exists as we knew it, but its spirit lives on through the people who passed through. The monstera now fills my friend’s living room, a reminder that even when places disappear, what they nurture can continue to take root elsewhere. Healing takes time, but every ending carries within it the possibility of another beginning.
Agata Stoinska is a Polish-born artist who moved to Dublin in 2003, and now works between Dublin and Amsterdam. Her project Echoes of a Dream was shown in 2025 at the RHA and this year at Momentum Gallery, Miami. She is currently expanding it into a cross-cultural research project on mourning rituals and memory. stoinska.com / @agatastoinska
Salem Anowe Chukwuezi Untitled, from the series No Man’s Land, 2026
Salem Anowe Chukwuezi, Untitled,
From the series: No Man’s Land (2026)
This image is part of my graduate showcase, No Man’s Land, a project about belonging, identity, and what it means to be Irish today. It focuses on the experiences of people from immigrant backgrounds and puts them in recognisably Irish landscapes. This project questions who is seen in a modern Ireland and explores how culture, place, and personal experience are intertwined.
In February 2026, I photographed Maeron Libombi Mampuja, who has Congolese-French heritage, and Oby Enehikare, who has Nigerian-Ghanaian heritage, on a farm near my hometown of Ratoath, Co Meath. This image is very personal to me as the farm symbolises the rurality of my upbringing, while their ethnic attire celebrates cultural heritage.
Growing up in a Nigerian household in rural Ireland often felt like living between two worlds: one shaped by the Irish countryside and the secluded community, while the other was formed by the native traditions and values of my Nigerian heritage. Both are equally part of who I am.
At a time where patriotism is used to justify xenophobia, No Man’s Land shows that being Irish isn’t only about the soil you were born from, but it reflects the reality of those who live within it, an identity shaped by movement, contribution, and shared experience.
Salem Anowe Chukwuezi is an award winning Nigerian visual artist based in Co Meath and Dublin. In 2026, she was selected for the Judge’s Choice for the inaugural Taylor Wessing Photo Prize Dublin. schukwuezi035398.myportfolio.com
Clodagh KilcoyneThe Life of Asma, 2018
Rohingya refugee Asma Akter (10) unloads frozen fish at Nazirartek drying yard in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters
I took this photograph on an assignment during the Rohingya refugee crisis in 2018. More than 700,000 Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar’s Rakhine State had fled from violence and killings into neighbouring Bangladesh, creating the largest refugee camp network in the world. Well over 1 million displaced were living in crowded temporary tents as far as the eye can see, in an area called Cox’s Bazar.
Here, Rohingya refugee Asma Akter, just 10 years old, works hard labour lifting heavy bags of frozen fish from a delivery truck at Nazirartek fish drying yard, under the burning Bangladesh sun in Cox’s Bazar. Asma should be in school or playing with his friends, living his life carefree.
In order to try and eek out some semblance of a living, refugees slip out of the guarded camps at dawn and work nearby until dusk for a very meagre sum – and in some cases, paid in fish – to supplement the insufficient humanitarian aid.
This image resonated with me because in conflict, violence, government sanctions and war, it’s children that always pay the highest price and bear the heaviest load.
Clodagh Kilcoyne is a freelance photographer who worked for Reuters for 10 years. She is based in Ireland. As well as covering domestic stories, she works overseas photographing humanitarian crisis, conflict, natural disasters, general news and sport. She has covered a wide variety of stories from the Olympics to the war in Ukraine, the Turkish-Syrian earthquake, the White House and the West Bank in Palestine. @clodaghkilcoyne
Perry OgdenHelena Christensen, Connemara, June 1993 Stylist: Isabella Stanhope. Make-up: Lucia Pieroni. Hair: Kerry Warn
Perry Ogden’s picture of Helena Christensen, Connemara, June 1993; Stylist: Isabella Stanhope. Make-up: Lucia Pieroni. Hair: Kerry Warn
I can’t say I have a favourite photo, there are so many. This photo of Helena Christensen is from a story I shot with stylist Isabella Stanhope for British Elle. In true 1990s supermodel style, Helena arrived at Ballynahinch Castle by helicopter and was driven to the set we had created in the middle of the Connemara bog near Lough Aliggan.
Around this time I had become disenchanted with photography – particularly the commercial side – and was back and forth to Paris where I was studying drawing and painting. I didn’t think I would take photographs again commercially but when Isabella asked me to do this shoot and said she could get Helena, I thought it would be worth a go. I felt like I was learning from drawing and painting, and I had become fascinated by the landscape of the bog and mountains, and the ritual of saving turf – the digging, drying and footing.
When shooting fashion I like to have a story, to create characters. Shooting fashion, you are dependent on many elements: hair, make-up, styling, props, the weather. It’s a collaborative effort and you’re hoping that you end up creating more than the sum of the parts. Of course, it helps to be working with a top, top model. This was one of those magical days when everything did come together and collectively we created a little bit of magic.
The story appeared across 12 pages in the November 1993 edition of Elle. This image particularly resonates as so many elements clicked: Helena’s expression, the outfit, the light, the setting. I like my pictures to look as if I caught a moment, as if I was passing by, saw something magical and asked the person to stop while I photographed them. I’m always after an authenticity, no matter how much has gone into creating that sense of authenticity.
Perry Ogden is a photographer, filmmaker and social activist, known for his work with SARI, who for the past 30 years has been based in Dublin. His books include Pony Kids, 7 Reece Mews: Francis Bacon’s Studio, and Paddy & Liam. He is currently working on a series about the last artists of Henrietta Street. perryogden.com @perryogden
Ros KavanaghMarie Mullen, publicity image for Testament, a play by Colm Tóibín directed by Garry Hynes. Made for Landmark Productions on its world premiere in 2011
Marie Mullen in a publicity image for Testament. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh
I actually didn’t take this photograph. Marie Mullen, standing in front of the lens, pressed the shutter by squeezing a bulb of air held in her hand. You can see the intermittent glint of the tube that connected it to the camera. I had read the script before the shoot, and thought, “I have no business to be deciding on this woman’s image”. In the play, she gives an account of her story to an empty room. It is unequivocally her perspective, and I wanted to see if I could preserve that.
To create a scene where this could happen, I made a confined niche with an opening at the back. This was to give a sense of confinement, with an idea of there being an “outside” to this space. A beam of light focused on Marie’s face. With this in place, she stepped in to the frame and took the photographs when she chose.
There are usually several people involved in a publicity shoot: the photographer, the producer, and make-up and hair will be also checking. Here, with all this going on, the moments of capture were quiet. I’ve been photographing theatre for nearly 40 years (if you count the school plays) and I still can’t quite understand how images of actors in character can translate to something recognisably powerful through a lens. It’s some kind of undefinable force. Noticing it, and not trying to rationalise it, makes for a continuously magical and fulfilling profession.
Ros Kavanagh is an arts photographer based in Dublin, professionally photographing since 1997. He works with arts organisations and artists and says he is happiest when collaborating, while also producing his own work. roskavanagh.com @roskavanagh
Anthony HaugheyMother and Children with Bible and Gun, from the series Home, 1992
Anthony Haughey, Mother and Children with Bible and Gun was taken in the Ballymun Towers
In the summer of 1989, I hitchhiked around Ireland with a small bag and a camera. Somewhere in Co Mayo, I climbed into a battered Renault 4. Looking down at the passenger footwell, I could see the road rushing beneath us through a hole where rust had eaten away the floor. There was no money and very little certainty in Ireland then. Yet, in that moment, it felt like home.
I arrived in Dublin in late August to stay with my aunt Mary and uncle Paddy in Ballymun. I spent much of my time with my cousin Mick. We climbed to the top of the Ballymun Towers and watched planes taking off from Dublin Airport. One lazy afternoon I was hanging around the house. My aunt and my two younger cousins were in the living room, with a small television flickering in the corner. My aunt was reading the Bible. My cousin Áine was half asleep, while Eoin lay across the table playing with a toy gun. They were oblivious to my presence. I lifted my Rolleiflex, looked down into the viewfinder, and made a single exposure. Then I thought no more about it.
Two weeks later I was back at art school in England. As I looked through the contact sheets, this image immediately caught my attention. Looking at it, I realised I had made a photograph unlike anything I had done before. That single photograph changed the direction of my life. It became the starting point for Home, the body of work that established me as an artist. What began with that one frame in my aunt’s house has travelled to more than 25 countries, introducing audiences around the world to a deeply personal portrait of Ballymun and pre-Celtic Tiger Ireland.
Anthony Haughey lives in Co Louth. His work is held in major national and international public collections, and will feature in forthcoming exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Ireland and Highlanes Gallery. He is currently developing All Quiet on the Eastern Front, a new body of work exploring the Nato–Russia borderlands. He is co-editor of Contemporary Socially Engaged Art Practice in Ireland: Modalities and Counter-Narratives, to be published by Cork University Press in November. anthonyhaughey.com @anthony_haughey
Conor HorganPortrait of Oliver Stanley, 1992
Conor Horgan, Portrait of Oliver Stanley, 1992.
To choose a favourite photograph is, of course, impossible. Even if I ignore the landscapes and still lifes I’ve made and narrow it down to portraiture, I’ve shot so very many of those it’s extremely difficult to pick one favourite.
Unless it’s this portrait of Oliver Stanley.
Technically, it’s far from perfect. Taken at the start of my career, it owes rather too much to the style of Richard Avedon, one of my early photographic heroes. I wish I’d framed Oliver a little to the left. Did I really have to crop the top of his head quite so tightly? Made in a time before Photoshop, I just had to live with the shaving cut on his chin.
But oh, the eyes – the eyes have it.
I first met designer and activist Oliver while in the middle of a personal crisis, one which he helped me through with compassion, generosity and no small amount of wit. We became firm friends. Though when the portrait was taken in 1992 he had yet to tell me and most of his friends that he was HIV positive. When he did, he let me know this was the portrait he wanted used for his obituary. He died on April 11th, 1995, at the age of 41.
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It is possible to choose a portrait of one of my favourite people, which can represent all of my favourite portraits. What they have in common is, as well as revealing something important about the subject, they make me feel something. We take pictures of people to remember what they look like. This shows what a beautiful man Oliver was. It doesn’t capture his mischievous sense of humour, but it does show something of his depth of character, not least his knowledge that he didn’t have long to live, coupled with his near-total lack of self-pity. These are some of the qualities of a hero. When I look at this image, the feeling I experience most keenly is love.
Conor Horgan is an award-winning visual artist, photographer and filmmaker. He won the inaugural Taylor Wessing Irish Photography Prize in April and has an upcoming exhibition Súil Amach, An Outward Eye, a Literature Ireland and Culture Ireland exhibition of portraits of great Irish writers that will be launched in the EU Parliament in September. conorhorgan.com @conorhorgan
Doreen Kilfeather Bonnie & Mabel, at home, 2024
Doreen Kilfeather, Bonnie & Mabel, at home
This image was captured for a Tatler commission celebrating Simone Rocha’s collaboration with H&M. The collection includes menswear, womenswear and children’s clothing. Working with stylist and creative director Aisling Farinella we chose to shoot the collection featuring real families instead of traditional models. Sisters Bonnie and Mabel are pictured here. I have always been fascinated by clothing – what we wear, why we wear it, how it makes us feel and the unique textures and sounds of different fabrics.
Portraiture is central to my work and clothing is vital for communicating a subject’s identity. Documenting these sisters in their own home, wearing their favourite pieces from the collection, was an absolute joy. Captured through a cinematic lens, this portrait explores themes of home, identity, sisterhood, family and play.
Doreen Kilfeather is a Dublin-based photographer specialising in portraiture and fashion photography. Her personal projects focus on her family and friends and their children. She returns to these communities of friends each year to document the feeling of being a child, an adolescent, a young adult, in portraits that capture both the person and a sense of the place they occupy. @dkilfeather