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The photographer Brian 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 photojournalists of his generation.

An International Career

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street titles, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot more than 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on online platforms up to a short time before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Tales from a rollercoaster career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and worked around the world for almost ten years, including reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial 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 the former Eastern Bloc documenting the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being let go in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which resulted in an display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him construct a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a central London agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his working life at east London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Colleagues and Impact

Other photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they went on a road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a short time before his demise, was to transfer his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred historical photos he reflected on a youthful Harris consuming large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed 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.