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The photographer B. Harris, who passed away aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his era.

A Global Career

He travelled the world as a independent or a staffer for major British titles, documenting major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot over 2m photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on online platforms up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Stories from a turbulent career featured an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend 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 employed to cool 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 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 hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He was appointed as 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 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 most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch 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 multiple pages. Among many awards, he was named the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major 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 personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street photo agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his professional career at east London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed 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 embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his demise, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred historical photos he reflected on a very young Harris consuming large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was married 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.