🔗 Share this article

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

A Global Career

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for major British titles, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over 2m photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on online platforms up to a short time before his passing, and had been arranging to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career included an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader 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 sea on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major striking him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He became the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for almost ten years, including reporting 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 became chief photographer as the team was put together to launch a major newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and newspaper design, in striking images covering multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc recording the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which led to 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.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a central London agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and began his professional career at eastern London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Peers and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, called him “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’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After learning of his illness, they went on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and good wine, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, completed a few weeks before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he reflected on a very young Harris consuming 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 second marriage, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.