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The photojournalist B. Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his era.

An International Career

He travelled across the globe as a independent or a staffer for major British publications, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting archive and recent images daily on social media until a short time before his passing, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career featured an costly 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 treated with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major hitting him with a rolled-up 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 reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and newspaper design, in striking images covering multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc documenting the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which led to an exhibition 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 east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of fine dining and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his death, 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 drinking large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no remorse 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.