🔗 Share this article

The photographer Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for major British publications, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He kept sharing archive and recent images each day on social media until a few weeks before his passing, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career featured an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been employed to cool 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 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 became 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 nearly a decade, including reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he saw as censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for press images and newspaper design, in dramatic images filling front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc recording the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent capturing 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 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

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

Colleagues and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a toddler in primary school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, posting sunny images of fine dining and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his demise, was to transfer his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite historical photos he reflected on a very young Harris drinking generous servings 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 survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his second marriage, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.