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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 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 generation.

An International Career

He travelled the world as a freelance or a staffer for major British titles, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing archive and recent images each day on social media up to a short time before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an irritated John Major striking him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Career Highlights

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 reporting of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered editing 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 new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and broadsheet design, in striking 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 eastern Europe documenting the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant 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 display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street photo agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his working life at eastern London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Colleagues and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed 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 first met as a toddler 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, sharing sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a short time before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he reflected on a very young Harris drinking 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 concluded with divorce.

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