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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his generation.

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled across the globe as a independent or a staffer for major British publications, 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 Balkan region and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot over 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 short time before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an costly premium flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo 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.

Career 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 was based around the world for almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered editing of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography 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 documenting the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being let go 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 exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son build a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated 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 woodwork and metalwork, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his working life at east London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Peers and Impact

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as astonishing. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a road trip in Europe, sharing 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 five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos he commented on a youthful Harris consuming 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, each union ended in divorce.

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