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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 UK photojournalists of his generation.

An International Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for major British publications, documenting such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting archive and recent images each day on online platforms up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was treated 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 sea on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an irritated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper 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 considered editing of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in striking images covering front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent capturing 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 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving 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 photo lab 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 woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

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

Colleagues and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected 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 road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of fine dining and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a short time before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite historical photos 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, both marriages ended in divorce.

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