🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed British photojournalists of his era.

An International Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a independent or a staffer for major British titles, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over 2m photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He kept sharing archive and recent images each day on social media 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 rollercoaster career featured an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

His 1983’s images of the at that time 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 hideous 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 folded briefing paper.

Professional Milestones

He was appointed as the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked 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 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 forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which led to an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son build a darkroom 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 went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, before departing at 16.

At a central London agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered 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 junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his demise, was to donate his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a very young Harris drinking large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

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