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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his era.

An International Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street titles, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot more than two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting archive and new images each day on social media until a few weeks before his passing, and had been planning 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 attend the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

His 1983 images of the at that time 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 often reprinted as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Milestones

He became the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper 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 considered editing of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering multiple 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 worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter 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 Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

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

Colleagues and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a cohort of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and good wine, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his demise, was to transfer his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a youthful Harris drinking large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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