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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his era.

An International Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street titles, covering major happenings including the fall 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 election campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing historical and new images each day on online platforms up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach 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’s images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he started there 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 later stepped down over what he saw as censorship of his strongest images of starvation 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 was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc documenting the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which led to an display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his professional career at east London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Peers and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, described him as “a great and brave photographer”, an influence 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 website with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing bright images of good meals and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his death, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a very young Harris drinking generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, each union concluded with divorce.

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