🔗 Share this article

The photographer B. Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his era.

An International Professional Journey

He journeyed the world as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting archive 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.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career featured an costly business class flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke 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 front page, and are often reprinted as a striking 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 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 nearly a decade, including reporting of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he saw as editing of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental 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 front and back 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 fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects after that included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which led to 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 raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

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

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of young colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite historical photos he reflected on a youthful Harris consuming generous servings 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 remembered by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his second marriage, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.