The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his era.
An International Professional Journey
He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street publications, 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 war and four US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his Essex home.
By his own calculation he took over 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on online platforms until a short time before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.Memorable Assignments
Stories from a turbulent 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 used to preserve the body.
His 1983’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were published 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 folded briefing paper.
Professional Highlights
He was appointed as the Times’ 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 considered censorship of his strongest images of starvation in Africa.
In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc documenting the collapse of communism.
He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent capturing 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 emotional book, Remembered.
Early Life and Beginnings
Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before departing at 16.
At a Fleet Street photo agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his professional career at eastern London local papers before progressing to national publications.
Colleagues and Legacy
Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.
Private World
In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.
His final project, completed a short time before his demise, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a youthful Harris drinking generous servings 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 concluded with divorce.
He is survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.
