🔗 Share this article

The photographer Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become among the most esteemed British documentary photographers of his era.

An International Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a independent or a employee 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, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He kept sharing historical and recent images daily on social media until a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke 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 tide on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted 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.

Career Milestones

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

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering front and back pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe documenting the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which resulted in an display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in carpentry and metalwork, before departing at 16.

At a central London agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his professional career at eastern London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

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 went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, completed a few weeks before his death, was to donate his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred historical photos he commented on a youthful Harris consuming generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

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