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The photographer B. Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 of cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his era.

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled across the globe as a independent or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, documenting major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing archive and recent images each day on social media until a short time before his passing, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding 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 at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of photo-opportunity 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.

Professional Milestones

He became the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including coverage 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 starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a new newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and newspaper design, in dramatic images covering front and back pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which led to an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son build a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Colleagues and Impact

Fellow 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 fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a short time before his demise, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he reflected on a very young Harris consuming 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 married twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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