🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his generation.

An International Professional Journey

He travelled across the globe as a independent or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, covering such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and several US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing historical and recent images daily on online platforms until a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Memorable 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 cooled down 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, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a hideous 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 folded briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He became the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based 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 editing of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images covering multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised 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 resulted in 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.

Early Life and Start

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his professional career at east London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Peers and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, 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 primary school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a road trip in Europe, sharing bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, completed a short time before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his preferred historical photos he reflected on a youthful Harris consuming 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 survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his second marriage, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.