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The photographer Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his era.

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street 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 throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting historical and new images daily 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 Projects

Stories from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to reach 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 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 multiple 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, took the title from an irritated John Major hitting him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional Milestones

He became the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his most powerful 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 raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in striking images covering front and back pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised 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 major projects thereafter 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 Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was raised 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 moved eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

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

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected 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 driving tour in Europe, posting sunny images of fine dining and good wine, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a few weeks before his demise, was to transfer his extensive collection of five decades of work to a permanent home. 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, each union ended in divorce.

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