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The photographer Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became among the most esteemed British photojournalists of his generation.

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled across the globe as a independent or a employee for major British publications, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot over two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting archive and new images each day on online platforms until a short time before his passing, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated 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, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He was appointed as the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as editing of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling front and back pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc documenting the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an display launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son construct a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in carpentry and metalwork, before departing at 16.

At a central London agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his working life at east London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of fine dining and good wine, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his death, was to transfer his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred historical photos he commented on a youthful Harris consuming large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

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