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The photographer Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected British documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a independent or a employee for major British titles, documenting such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting archive and recent images each day on online platforms until a short time before his death, and had been arranging to give a talk on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career featured 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 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, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across eight 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, took the title from an irritated John Major striking him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional Milestones

He became the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for nearly a decade, including coverage of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a major newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and newspaper design, in striking 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 recording the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which led to an exhibition 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 build a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, before departing at 16.

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

Peers and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, described him as “a great and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact 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 went on a driving tour in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his demise, was to donate his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a youthful Harris consuming large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

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