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The photographer B. Harris, who passed away 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 generation.

An International Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a employee for major British publications, documenting such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic 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 stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting archive and recent images daily on online platforms until a short time before his passing, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career included an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced 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 Milestones

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for almost ten years, including reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images filling multiple pages. Among many awards, he was named the What the Papers Say 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 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 Start

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son 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 a local secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork 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 east London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a short time before his death, was to transfer his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a very young Harris consuming large glasses 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 survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.