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

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street publications, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than 2m images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting historical and recent images each day on online platforms until a short time before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding business class 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 employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He became the Times’ 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 later stepped down over what he saw as censorship of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together 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 dramatic images filling front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the collapse 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 Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 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 eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as astonishing. A colleague, who worked with him in the initial stages, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of fine dining and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his death, was to donate his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a very young Harris consuming large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married 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.