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The photographer B. Harris, who passed away aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his era.

An International Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street titles, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created lyrical scenic views of the rural areas around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot over two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on social media until a short time before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a rollercoaster career featured 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 treated 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, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of photo-opportunity 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.

Career Highlights

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including reporting 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 famine 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 was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and broadsheet design, in striking images covering multiple pages. Among numerous 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 operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, 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 born in eastern 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 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 leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Colleagues and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort 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 Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his demise, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he commented 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 married twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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