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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his era.

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street titles, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing historical and recent images daily on online platforms up to a short time before his passing, and had been arranging to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career included an costly premium flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

His 1983 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He became the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for nearly a decade, including coverage of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to create a new 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 dramatic images covering front and back 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 collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which resulted in an display launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son build a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved 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 metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. 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 regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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