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The photojournalist B. Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected British photojournalists of his era.

A Global Career

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for major British publications, documenting major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and several US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical scenic views of the rural areas around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting archive and recent images daily on online platforms up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Assignments

Stories 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 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 tide on Brighton beach were published across eight 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, was named after an exasperated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Milestones

He became the a major newspaper’s 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 coverage of the end of the civil war 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 became chief photographer as the team was put together to launch a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling front and back pages. Among many 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 worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing 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 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his working life at east London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort 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 Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his remaining years. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, completed a few weeks before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos he commented on a youthful 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 married twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

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