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

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street publications, documenting such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot more than two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He kept sharing historical and new images each day on social media up to a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Notable Projects

Tales from a rollercoaster career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician 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 at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered editing of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and newspaper design, in striking images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the fall of communism.

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

Background and Start

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in carpentry and metalwork, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street photo agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his professional career at east London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the initial stages, 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’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website 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 learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, posting bright images of fine dining and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his demise, was to donate his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred historical photos he commented on a youthful Harris consuming generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married 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.