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The photographer B. Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Career

He journeyed the world 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 Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot over 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting archive and new images each day on social media up to a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Memorable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

His 1983’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front 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 hitting him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional Milestones

He became 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 most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was named 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 thereafter included a year spent capturing 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 Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him construct a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, acquiring useful 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 national publications.

Peers and Impact

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the initial stages, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, 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 website with Nikki, whom he had first met 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 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 short time before his death, was to transfer his vast archive 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 fortunate life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married twice, each union ended in divorce.

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