HIS pictures span 23 years of history and life in Brighton and Hove.

Stewart Weir, who was born and raised in the city, was the Albion’s photographer from 1995 to 1996.

But he got banned from the club’s Goldstone Ground when he stepped on to the grass during a pitch invasion by fans angered by the sale of the stadium.

He said: “I produced a photo documentary series of the struggles of the fans between 1995 and 1997 called More Than Ninety Minutes, so I have a lot of portraits from that time.

“Then between 2000 and 2010, I took photos on Brighton beach between the piers for a photo series.”

The 55-year-old first got into photography when his father gave him a Pentax ME Super 35mm film camera as a Christmas present when he was 15.

He went into the Army for five years after school and later worked as an estate agent but decided to turn photography into his career in 1993.

Since then, his work has been published in National Geographic, Vogue, GQ and several national newspapers.

Stewart’s photos of the beach are largely candid shots depicting people caught unaware, like a young boy running between the West Pier columns and a couple kissing in the sea.

He said: “The landscape has changed a lot in the time I’ve been taking photos on the seafront, with the new retail units on the beach, the i360 and the wind farm.

“The seafront is constantly changing, it has changed so much since the time it was a fishing village and even in the last 50 years.

“It is always in the back of my mind when I’m shooting that in 50 or 100 years from now, Brighton won’t look like it does now.

“There might be a new West Pier, or the city might be encased in a lagoon which would change the look and feel of the seafront.

For the last year or so, he says he has been focusing on more staged portraits.

“Brighton is very much a quirky city, there is nowhere else in the UK that is at all like Brighton.

“It is so multicultural and forgiving.

“I want to create a reflection of what the city is by creating a long-term series of images of quirky people who have interesting stories.”

The portraits he has taken so far include fashion designer and tailor Gresham Blake, who has a shop in Brighton’s Bond Street, and Eli Ink, the 27-year-old tattoo artist who has filled in most of his body, including his eyeballs, with black ink.

Stewart said: “I found him on Instagram then we spoke on the phone and met up.

“He was a really interesting character.

“We can all have preconceptions of people based on their looks and outlooks, but it’s only when we meet someone that we actually get to know them and understand them.

“When I met Eli, it was like we had known each other for a long time.”

Then there is Billy, a man Stewart met when they were both 14.

He said: “I occasionally bumped into him in the street to say hello to over the years, but when I took his portrait it was the first time I have sat down with him to talk to him about what has happened in our lives in the last 40 or so years.”

Stewart works for a commercial property company and takes digital photos of architecture and buildings.

His seafront and portrait series, he says, is a much more “organic” process: “I prefer to shoot with film, because digital is too easy and instantaneous.

“I have spent way too much time on social media and in front of a screen, and analogue forces me to move away from that. It slows the process down, I wait a couple of weeks before I develop my film, and mull over my images for a while after that.”

Stewart’s Instagram page is at instagram.com/stewartweir.