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The photojournalist B. Harris, who has died at the age of 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his era.

An International Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for major British publications, covering 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 across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot over two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He kept sharing archive and recent images daily on online platforms up to a few weeks before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a rollercoaster career included an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated 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 sea on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and newspaper design, in dramatic images filling 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 documenting the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which led to an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born 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 relocated eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and began his professional career at eastern London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Peers and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki, whom he had first met as a toddler in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a road trip in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and good wine, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his demise, was to transfer his vast archive 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 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 later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.