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The photojournalist B. Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 of cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his era.

A Global Career

He travelled the world as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street publications, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting archive and new images each day on online platforms up to a short time before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the slain politician 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 images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the sea 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 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major hitting him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He became the a major newspaper’s youngest ever 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 internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to launch a major newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his working life at east London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Peers and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing sunny 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 demise, was to donate his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he commented 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, each union ended in divorce.

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