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The photographer Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his generation.

An International Career

He travelled across the globe as a independent or a employee for major British titles, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing historical and new images daily on online platforms up to a few weeks before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career included an costly business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral 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 tide on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking 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.

Professional Milestones

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for almost ten years, 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 put together to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and broadsheet design, in striking images covering multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe documenting the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major projects after that 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 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in carpentry and metalwork, before departing at 16.

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

Peers and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred historical photos he commented on a very young Harris drinking generous servings 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 concluded with divorce.

He is remembered by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.