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

An International Professional Journey

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street titles, documenting major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He kept sharing historical and recent images each day on online platforms up to a short time before his passing, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

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

Career Milestones

He became the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked 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 strongest images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to create a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc 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 Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son construct a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Peers and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as astonishing. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “reimagined 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 initially encountered 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 fine dining and good wine, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, completed a short time before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos he reflected on a youthful Harris consuming large glasses 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 remembered by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his second marriage, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.