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

A Global Career

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street titles, documenting such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting archive and recent images each day on social media up to a short time before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Tales from a rollercoaster career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke 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, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based 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 saw as editing of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to launch a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and newspaper design, in striking 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 worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son build a photo lab 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 attended a local secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his professional career at eastern London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Colleagues and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort of junior colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ 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 blessed life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed 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.