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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died 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 British photojournalists of his era.

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street titles, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting archive and recent images daily on online platforms up to a short time before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Projects

Tales from a rollercoaster career included an costly business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the assassinated leader 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 at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an irritated 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 joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for nearly a decade, including coverage of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he saw as censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and newspaper design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc documenting the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which led to an display launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local 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 eastern London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Colleagues and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time 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 reflected on a very young Harris drinking 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, both marriages ended in divorce.

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