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The photographer Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his era.

An International Career

He travelled across the globe as a independent or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot over 2m 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 up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding business class 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 employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s 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 regularly reproduced as a hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He became the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked 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 saw as editing of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a major newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent capturing 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 Beginnings

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – 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 began his professional career at east London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a superb 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 made contact through a website with Nikki, whom he had first met as a toddler in primary school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, posting sunny 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 five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred historical photos he reflected on a very young Harris drinking 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 married twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

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