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

A Global Career

He journeyed across the globe as a independent or a staffer for major British titles, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing historical and new images daily on social media up to a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an costly premium flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

His 1983’s images of the at that time 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 staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major striking him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for nearly a decade, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to launch a new newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering 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 documenting the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which led to an display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – 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 metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

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

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a cohort of junior colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered 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 bright images of good meals and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a few weeks before his death, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a youthful Harris drinking generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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