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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 of cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become one of the most respected British documentary photographers of his era.

A Global Career

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for major British publications, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot over two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He kept sharing archive and new images each day on online platforms up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Projects

Tales from a rollercoaster career included an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered editing of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and newspaper design, in dramatic images filling front and back pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc recording the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son construct a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a central London agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and began his professional career at east London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, described him as “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and good wine, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his demise, was to transfer his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a youthful Harris consuming generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

He is survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his second marriage, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.