🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 of 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 journeyed the world as a independent or a staffer for major British titles, documenting major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on social media until a short time before his passing, and had been arranging to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career included an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend the burial 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 then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional 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 coverage of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered editing of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in dramatic images covering multiple pages. Among many awards, he was named the What the Papers Say 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 significant 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 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son construct a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a central London agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Peers and Impact

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a cohort of junior colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they went on a driving tour in Europe, posting bright images of fine dining and good wine, 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 archive images he reflected on a very young Harris drinking generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no regrets 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.