🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his era.

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a independent or a staffer 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 Balkans 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.

By his own calculation he took more than two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He kept sharing historical and new images daily on social media until a short time before his death, and had been arranging to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Projects

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

His 1983 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He was appointed as 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 reporting 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 starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards 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 recording the collapse of communism.

He operated independently 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 led to an display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a central London agency, he quickly advanced 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 outpaced by him, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and brave 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 made contact through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, 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 driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of fine dining and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he reflected 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, both marriages ended in divorce.

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