🔗 Share this article

The photographer Brian Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected British photojournalists of his era.

An International Career

He travelled the world as a independent or a staffer for major British publications, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot over 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on social media up to a short time before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

His 1983’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide 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 irritated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He became the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for nearly a decade, including reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered editing of his strongest images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in striking images covering front and back pages. Among many awards, he was named 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 let go 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 resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

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

Colleagues and Impact

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a cohort of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to important 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 historical photos 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, both marriages ended in divorce.

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