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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 of cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his era.

A Global Career

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street publications, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created lyrical scenic views of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over 2m photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing historical and new images each day on social media until a short time before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career featured an costly business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983 images of the at that time 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 hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

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 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 most powerful 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 newspaper design, in striking images filling front and back pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as 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 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 personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

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 mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his professional career at east London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a great 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’ 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 infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite 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 wed twice, each union ended in divorce.

He is survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his second marriage, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.