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The photojournalist B. Harris, who has died at the age of 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became among the most esteemed British documentary photographers of his generation.

An International Career

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street titles, documenting such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and several US election campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot over two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing historical and new images each day on social media up to a short time before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Projects

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was treated 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 tide on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of photo-opportunity 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.

Career Highlights

He became the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict 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 major newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper 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 the former Eastern Bloc recording the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son construct a photo lab 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 carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street photo agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his working life at eastern London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Peers and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, 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, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and revisiting 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 permanent home. Among his favourite 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 regrets 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.