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The photojournalist B. Harris, who passed away 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 British documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street titles, covering such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over 2m images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting historical and new images each day on social media until a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to attend 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, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an irritated John Major striking him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as 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 internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered editing of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling front and back pages. Among numerous 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 fall of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, 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 Beginnings

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son construct a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before departing at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery 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, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and fearless photographer”, an inspiration 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 reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After learning of his illness, they went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of good meals and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred 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 married twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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