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The photographer B. Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his generation.

An International Career

He travelled the world as a independent or a staffer for major British publications, documenting such events as the fall 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 several US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He kept sharing archive and new images each day on social media until a short time before his passing, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Projects

Stories from a rollercoaster career featured an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down 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, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were published 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 hitting him with a rolled-up 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 editing of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc recording the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go 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 display launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician 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 went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, 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 moving on to national publications.

Peers and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a superb 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”.

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 inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of fine dining and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his demise, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his preferred historical photos he commented on a youthful Harris drinking 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 married twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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