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The photographer B. Harris, who passed away aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his generation.

An International Career

He journeyed across the globe as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street publications, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot over 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting archive and recent images daily on online platforms until a short time before his passing, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Tales from a rollercoaster career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down 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, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front page, and are often reprinted 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 striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s 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 later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled 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 covering multiple pages. Among many awards, he was named the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc documenting the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and major 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 private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background 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 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

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

Colleagues and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and fearless 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”.

Personal Life

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

His last task, completed a few weeks before his death, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos he reflected on a youthful Harris consuming generous servings 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 later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.