🔗 Share this article

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

A Global Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street titles, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot more than 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He kept sharing historical and recent images each day on online platforms until a short time before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling 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, took the title from an irritated 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 started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for nearly a decade, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to create a new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images covering 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 fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which led to an display launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning useful skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

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

Peers and Impact

Other photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, described him as “a great and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny 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 donate his extensive collection of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he reflected on a youthful 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.