🔗 Share this article

The photojournalist B. Harris, who has died at the age of 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 generation.

An International Career

He journeyed across the globe as a independent or a staffer for major British titles, documenting such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes 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 several years ago. He continued posting archive and new images daily on social media up to a few weeks before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Projects

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the slain politician 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 images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a striking 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 became the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including reporting 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 famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to create a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images filling 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 documenting the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered 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 driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant 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 historical photos he reflected 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 ended in divorce.

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