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 seriesAlen 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 @alenmacweeneyRich GilliganBruce Kelliher, Kenmare, Co Kerry, 2000Rich 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 @richgilliganAgata StoinskaEchoes of a Dream: Seed, 2024Agata Stoinska, The Seed, from Echoes of