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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 eventually became one of the most respected British documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, documenting major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot over 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing historical 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 career and experiences.

Notable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across eight 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 irritated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional 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 coverage of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to create a new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in striking images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe documenting the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter 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 private viewing to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional 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 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in woodwork 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 eastern London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a great and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

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 went on a road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his demise, was to donate his extensive collection of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos he reflected on a very young Harris consuming generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married twice, each union concluded with divorce.

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