🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a employee for major British 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 across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical scenic views of the rural areas around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot over 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing historical and new images daily on online platforms until a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career featured an costly business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve 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 eight columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He was appointed as the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper 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 famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among many 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 operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects after that 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 Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was raised in east 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 moved eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern London local papers before progressing 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, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, 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 first met as a toddler in primary school, and they became close companions through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, posting sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his death, was to donate his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred historical photos he reflected 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 ended in divorce.

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