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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Career

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a employee for major British titles, documenting such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US presidential 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, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He kept sharing historical and new images daily on online platforms up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career included an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated 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 tide on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He became the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for nearly a decade, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he saw as editing of his strongest images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in striking images covering front and back pages. Among many awards, he was named 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 let go in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an exhibition 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 technician who later assisted him build a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his professional career at eastern London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as astonishing. A colleague, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort 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 toddler in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a short time before his death, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred 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, each union concluded with divorce.

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