🔗 Share this article

The photographer 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 among the most esteemed British photojournalists of his era.

An International Career

He journeyed across the globe as a independent or a staffer for major British publications, covering such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot more than two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He kept sharing archive and new images each day on online platforms until a short time before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been used to preserve 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 front page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Career 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 nearly a decade, including reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as 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 new newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in striking images filling front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe documenting 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.

Background and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – 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 carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo 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.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. 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 short time before his death, was to transfer his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he commented 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 concluded with divorce.

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