Brighton 25

When I moved to Brighton from Devon in 2000 I was drawn, like so many others by the excitement and pace of the place. Always moving, changing scenes and people, it's sometimes hard to keep track but making pictures helps you do that. My first aim was to establish myself here as well as enjoying a life by the sea.

Work has always kept me focused and the ‘beachfront beat’ gave me a much needed focus to do this.

This exhibition looks at the seafront and my relationship with it. It’s always there but ever changing and that’s what’s been great to document.

Both piers feature heavily, as I feel they should being two of Brighton’s biggest attractions. I observed as the West Pier and it’s surroundings have decayed over the years, but they continue to find new audiences that visit the city every year.

It’s been a difficult task to edit the thousands of images down to 25, one for each year of my residency. The people that promenade, work, protest and play near the sea have seen many of these pictures used by newspapers for nearly 3 decades.

Luckily English newspapers have a particular fascination with the weather which also helps. The exhibition is a mixture of press work shot for publications and personal pictures too. I feel I’m about to start down a new route of shooting with less constraints than the world of print journalism brings.

I’ve taken many close ups of people along the way but for Photofringe I wanted to show more of the complete scenes in these pictures and how we as a collective fit in.

So much happens within the city too which is why I’ve chosen a handful of pictures that steer away from the sea, a gentle nod to events, happenings and protest in parts of the city that resonate with me.

I started my 40-year career here in Sussex and having moved around the country with work via Kent, Gloucestershire and Devon my ‘Feedback Loop’ found me back here. Shooting a continuing cycle of pictures on the same walk - observing decay, change and rebuilding followed by another slow slip into decay. That is life here.