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The photojournalist B. Harris, who passed away aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his era.

A Global Career

He journeyed the world as a independent or a staffer for major British titles, documenting such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing archive and new images each day on online platforms up to a short time before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader 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 images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major striking 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 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 was made head photographer as the team was put together to launch a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and newspaper design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which led to an display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street photo 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

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked 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 “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 receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, completed a short time before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a youthful Harris drinking 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 concluded with divorce.

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