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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his generation.

A Global Career

He journeyed the world as a independent or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates 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 new images each day on online platforms until a short time before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a rollercoaster career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down 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 sea on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Career 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 nearly a decade, including reporting of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in striking images filling multiple pages. Among numerous 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 war memorial organisation, which resulted in an exhibition 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 Beginnings

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his death, was to donate his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he commented on a very young Harris drinking large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married 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.