🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist B. 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 Career

He journeyed across the globe as a independent or a staffer for Fleet Street titles, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and several US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot more than two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He kept sharing historical and new images daily on social media until a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician 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, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major hitting him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He became 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 later stepped down over what he considered editing of his strongest 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 journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and newspaper design, in dramatic 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 the former Eastern Bloc documenting the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant 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 display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated 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 metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern 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 collaborated with him in the initial stages, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became close companions through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of good meals and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his demise, was to transfer his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he reflected on a youthful Harris drinking generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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