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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed British photojournalists of his generation.

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a freelance or a employee for major British titles, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he took over 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting archive and recent images each day on online platforms until a short time before his passing, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Projects

Stories from a rollercoaster career featured an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the at that time 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 photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an irritated John Major hitting 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 almost ten years, including reporting of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered editing of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and newspaper design, in striking images filling front and back 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 fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which led to an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son construct a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and began 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 astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, 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 infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos 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 remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, each union ended in divorce.

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