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The photojournalist B. Harris, who passed away aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed British documentary photographers of his generation.

An International Professional Journey

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street titles, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over 2m images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He kept sharing historical and new images daily on online platforms up to a short time before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke 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, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo 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 a major newspaper’s youngest ever 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 civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he saw as editing of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe documenting the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him construct a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning practical skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his professional career at eastern London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they went on a road trip in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and good wine, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his death, was to donate his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he commented 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 wed twice, each union concluded with divorce.

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