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The photojournalist B. Harris, who passed away aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected British photojournalists of his era.

A Global Career

He journeyed across the globe as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street titles, documenting such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. He also created lyrical scenic views of the rural areas around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting historical and new images each day on online platforms until a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career included an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed 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, toppling into the tide 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 became the Times’ most youthful 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 editing of his strongest images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to create a new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in dramatic images covering multiple pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc recording the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent photographing 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 Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, before departing at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his working life at east London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Colleagues and Impact

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website 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 road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and good wine, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his demise, was to transfer his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his favourite archive images he commented on a very young Harris consuming 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 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.