The following correction was printed in the Observer's For the record column, Sunday 12 December 2010

The Scottish Gaelic title of Murdo Macleod's book Gnùis does not mean "genius", as we claimed in this article.

David Bailey: The Kray twins (1965)

The photographic guv'nor from east London. People have written him off so often but he is still shooting and as irascible as ever. I spotted him underneath a baseball cap recently and asked him how it was all going. "Nobody's using me, but the art world have discovered me!" he said. This picture of the Kray twins, whose gang ran a protection racket in London in the 60s, is classic Bailey: pure white background, no arms or hands, strong shape and form. I'm scared just looking at them.

Jane Bown: Sinéad O'Connor (1992)

I was lucky enough to work alongside Jane for nearly 15 years. This portrait of Sinéad O'Connor really stunned me when she took it and I have it on my wall. Her photographs are always simple and powerful and I love the defiance in this one, where, unusually, the subject isn't looking at the camera. Always preferring to work in black and white, Bown has dominated portraiture for 50 years. Respect.

August Sander: Baker (1928)

This is the forerunner for all those trendy chefs being photographed with meat cleavers and dead fish for today's food magazines. Baker, taken in 1928, was part of a mammoth series called People of the 20th Century. Sander wanted to take photographs of the entire German nation. He fell out with the Nazis and had his book Face of Our Time seized and the plates and negatives destroyed. Most of the rest of his work was looted after a bombing raid on his studio. Click here to see the image.

Chris Smith: Muhammad Ali (1971)

Chris Smith, who worked on this newspaper in the late 60s and early 70s, was my hero. His sports photographs won many awards and when I was lucky enough to get his job here on the Observer I was always worried about what he was going to produce in his new role at the Sunday Times. This photograph of Muhammad Ali in his prime, taken in the 5th Street Gym Miami Beach before the Frazier fight in 1971, was printed with a piece from Hugh McIlvanney. The Sunday Times let him go far too early. What a waste.

Murdo Macleod: Roy Keane (2002)

The best photographer working in Britain today. He doesn't take photographs so much as constructs them. A great ideas man who can light a Scottish glen. This photograph of Roy Keane was done in five minutes while Keane had a cab waiting in Manchester. Murdo had found the dead bird a few days before and he did a deal with Keane. "Hold this for a minute and you can go." What it means I don't know, but it is stunning and he uses it on the cover of his recent book Gnùis which means Genius… which he is!

Eve Arnold: Marilyn Monroe on the set of The Misfits (1960)

This photograph, shot in Reno, Nevada in 1960 has an incredible sense of place and of Monroe's vulnerability. She and Arnold first worked together on a shoot for Esquire magazine in 1952 and, as Arnold says: "She trusted me, and the bond between us was photography." Magnum had sent nine photographers to cover the making of The Misfits, surely the most ever, but it was Arnold's work that really stood out. This was a looser, more intimate look than Hollywood had ever shown before in its publicity stills. Click here to see the image.

Anton Corbijn: John Lee Hooker's hand (1994)

Anton Corbijn is 6ft 7in tall – a great advantage when you are photographing rock bands playing live. Born in Holland, he went on to be the official photographer for U2. Now a great film-maker, he made the Joy Division biopic Control and The American, released last weekend. He got bored covering bands at gigs and became a portrait photographer, taking many risks with his hand-held Hasselblad camera. This portrait of John Lee Hooker, the blues guitarist, has no face but says so much about the hard life Hooker had.

Steve Pyke: Jerry Lewis (2000)

When Richard Avedon died, Steve Pyke was invited to take over the greatest portrait job in journalism: staff photographer on the New Yorker. A former music photographer and a man of many personal projects, this photograph of the comedian Jerry Lewis was one of the first portraits Pyke took for the magazine. Still working with his Rolleiflex camera and a close-up lens bought from a camera shop in Edinburgh, Pyke made his name with very tight portraits of everybody from philosophers to film stars.

Neil Libbert Subway, New York (1984)

I have never been any good at street photography – I have never had the nerve – but one man who does is Neil Libbert, who has used his Leica camera in some very difficult situations over the years. This photograph was taken on the subway in New York in 1984, when it was a very tough place to work. The woman would have never seen the camera and the Wall Street sign locates it in New York so well. Libbert also took the great exclusive photograph of nail-bomb attack on the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, London in 1999, which made the front page of the Guardian.

This photograph of a shell-shocked US marine in Hue, Vietnam in 1968 could be a self-portrait of McCullin himself. He too has seen too much while covering the major war zones around the world. He now lives in Somerset with his "ghosts", as he calls the negatives stored in his filing cabinets. His work has been compared to Goya's most terrifying imagery, which allows us to glimpse the unbearable. Born 10 years before me in Finsbury Park, north London, his first pictures were of a gang of teddy boys who had killed a policeman – one of the photographs appeared on the front page of this newspaper and launched his career. Click here to see the image.

Decade, a history of the past 10 years told in photographs, by Eamonn McCabe and Dr Terence McNamee is out now . To order for £19.96 with free UK P&P call 0330 333 6847 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk.