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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed British photojournalists of his era.

A Global Career

He travelled the world as a freelance or a staffer for major British titles, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting archive and new images each day on social media until a short time before his passing, and had been arranging to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

His 1983 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a leading 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 rolled-up briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He became the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of starvation 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 set new standards for news photography and newspaper design, in striking images filling front and back pages. Among many awards, he was named the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe documenting the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a darkroom 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 went to a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

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

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the early days, described him as “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, 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, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After learning of his illness, they went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his death, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he reflected on a very young 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.