🔗 Share this article Brian Harris Obituary: A Life Behind the Lens The photographer B. Harris, who has died aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become among the most esteemed British photojournalists of his era. A Global Professional Journey He journeyed the world as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street titles, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the countryside around his home county of Essex home. According to his estimates he took more than two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing archive and new images each day on online platforms up to a short time before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences. Notable Assignments Stories from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve the body. His 1983’s images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were published across multiple 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 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 worked around the world for almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as censorship of his strongest images of starvation in Africa. In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the fall of communism. He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which led to an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered. Background and Start Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16. At a central London agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before moving on to major publications. Peers and Legacy Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”. Personal Life In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler 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, sharing bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres. His final project, finished a few weeks before his death, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he commented on a very young Harris drinking large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no regrets and no ‘Must Do’s’”. He was wed twice, both marriages concluded with divorce. He is survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.