🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 of cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his generation.

An International Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street titles, documenting such events as 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 consequences of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting historical and new images daily on online platforms up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve 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 front page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major striking him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He became the Times’ 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 reporting of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son construct a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

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

Peers and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the initial stages, described him as “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a cohort of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki, whom he had first met as a toddler in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of fine dining and good wine, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his death, was to transfer his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a very young Harris drinking generous servings 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, 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.