Alen MacWeeney was my mother’s first boyfriend, but the relationship didn’t last after he moved to New York to become Richard Avedon’s assistant. He went on to have a stellar career as a photographer there, often coming back to Ireland to shoot a long-term project on the travelling community. I bought one of his prints of two traveller kids with the proceeds from the first script I ever sold, and it’s up in pride of place on the living room wall.

It was great to catch up with him when I was back in Dublin last week. He told me about the new biography of Avedon, saying “it reads like a thriller”. I’m halfway through its 700 pages, and he’s not wrong.

You can see some of my other pictures of artists in this gallery.