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The photojournalist B. Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his generation.

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street publications, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical scenic views of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot more than 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting archive and new images each day on social media up to a short time before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a rollercoaster career included an costly premium 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’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of photo-opportunity 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 became the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for nearly a decade, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images covering multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised 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 significant projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which resulted in an display launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as remarkable. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his death, was to transfer his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his favourite archive images he commented on a very young Harris drinking generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed 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.