🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 of cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a freelance or a staffer for major British titles, covering such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

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

Notable Projects

Tales from a rollercoaster career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to attend the funeral 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’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He was appointed as the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography and newspaper design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc recording the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing 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 Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son construct a photo lab 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 attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his professional career at eastern London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became close companions through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright 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 transfer his vast archive 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 fortunate life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed 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.