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The photographer Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became among the most esteemed British documentary photographers of his era.

A Global Career

He travelled the world as a freelance or a staffer for major British titles, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and several US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical scenic views of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot more than two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting archive and new images daily on online platforms until a few weeks before his passing, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

His 1983 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s 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 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 reporting of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as 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 became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering front and back pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc recording the fall 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 Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 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 moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son construct a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning useful skills in carpentry and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

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

Peers and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a great and fearless 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”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a toddler in primary school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they went on a road trip in Europe, sharing bright images of fine dining and good wine, and revisiting important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his death, was to donate his extensive collection of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite archive images 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 survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.