🔗 Share this article

The photographer Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became among the most esteemed British photojournalists of his generation.

An International Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a freelance or a staffer for major British publications, documenting such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot more than 2m photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing archive and new images each day on social media until a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down 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, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced 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 striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He was appointed as the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for nearly a decade, including coverage of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling multiple 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 fall 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 war memorial organisation, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen 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 technician who later helped his son construct a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

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

Colleagues and Impact

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they went on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a youthful Harris drinking 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 wed twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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