🔗 Share this article

The photographer Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became among the most esteemed British documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Career

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street titles, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical scenic views of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over 2m images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing archive and new images each day on social media up to a short time before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career featured an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983 images of the at that time 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 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major striking him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He was appointed as the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked 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 saw as editing of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images filling multiple pages. Among many awards, he was named 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 made redundant in 1999, and significant 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 personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

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 to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his working life at eastern London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, 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, posting sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his death, was to transfer his extensive collection of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos he reflected on a youthful Harris drinking large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, each union concluded with divorce.

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