🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away 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 UK documentary photographers of his era.

An International Career

He journeyed the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street publications, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting historical and new images each day on online platforms until a short time before his passing, and had been arranging to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Projects

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 collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down 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 carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He was appointed as the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper 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 later stepped down 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 create a new newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering multiple pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc recording the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an exhibition 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 Start

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in carpentry and metalwork, before departing at 16.

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

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, described him as “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, posting bright images of fine dining and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he reflected on a youthful 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 second marriage, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.