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The photographer Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 of cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his era.

An International Professional Journey

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street titles, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

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

Memorable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding business class 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 at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front 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 hitting him with a rolled-up 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 internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief 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 was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography and newspaper design, in striking images covering multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as 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 made redundant in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent photographing 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 Beginnings

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

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

Peers and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, posting bright images of fine dining and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a few weeks before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he commented on a youthful Harris consuming generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no regrets 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.