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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected British photojournalists of his era.

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street titles, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on online platforms up to a short time before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career featured an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the sea 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 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an irritated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as the Times’ 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 eventually resigned over what he considered editing of his most powerful 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 raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe documenting the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent capturing 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 assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Peers and Impact

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went 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, completed a short time before his death, was to transfer his extensive collection of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred historical photos he commented on a youthful Harris drinking large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married 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.