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The photojournalist B. Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his era.

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a employee for major British publications, covering such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and several US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical scenic views of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting archive and recent images daily on social media up to a short time before his death, and had been arranging to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career included an costly 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 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 published across eight columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He became the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including reporting of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to create a new newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and newspaper design, in striking images covering front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as 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 operated independently after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which led to an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II 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 helped his son construct a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his working life at eastern London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Peers and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the initial stages, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

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

His final project, finished a few weeks before his demise, was to transfer his extensive collection of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos he reflected on a very young Harris consuming large glasses 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 survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.