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

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a freelance or a staffer for major British publications, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger 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 presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing historical and recent images daily on social media until a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 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 was appointed as the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked 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 most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering front and back pages. Among many awards, he was named the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the collapse 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 war memorial organisation, which led to an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

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

Peers and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

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 inseparable partners through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a short time before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite archive images he commented on a very young Harris consuming large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

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