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The photojournalist B. Harris, who has died at the age of 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become one of the most respected British documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Career

He journeyed the world as a freelance or a staffer for major British titles, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot more than two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting historical and recent images each day on social media up to a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Stories from a rollercoaster career featured an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s 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 leading page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 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 Highlights

He was appointed as the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper 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 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 create a new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for press images and broadsheet design, in striking 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 the former Eastern Bloc documenting the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an display launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his working life at eastern London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became close companions through his remaining years. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and good wine, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a few weeks before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a youthful 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 married twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

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