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The photographer Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 of cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his era.

An International Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street titles, covering such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than 2m photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing archive and new images each day on social media up to a short time before his passing, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Tales 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 collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve 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 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, was named after an irritated John Major hitting him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He became 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 later stepped down over what he considered editing of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief 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 raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in striking images filling multiple 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 collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects after that 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 personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and began his professional career at east London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing sunny 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 transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a very young Harris consuming generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed 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.