Brian Harris Life Story: An Existence Through the Lens

The photojournalist B. Harris, who has died aged 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 era.

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing archive and recent images each day on online platforms up to a short time before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach 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 employed to cool the body.

His 1983 images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of photo-opportunity 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.

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 saw as editing of his strongest images of starvation 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 became known for, helping set new standards for press images and broadsheet design, in striking 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 recording the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his working life at eastern London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact 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 went on a road trip in Europe, sharing bright images of fine dining and good wine, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his death, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a youthful 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 concluded with divorce.

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