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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 one of the most respected British documentary photographers of his generation.

An International Career

He journeyed the world as a freelance or a employee for major British titles, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than 2m images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing historical and new images daily 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 Projects

Stories from a turbulent career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted 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 tide on Brighton beach were published across eight 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, was named after an exasperated John Major hitting him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He became the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper 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 eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images filling multiple 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 collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects after that included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved 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 woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a central London agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and began his professional career at eastern London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the initial stages, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a cohort of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

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 final decades. After learning of his illness, they went on a road trip in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he reflected 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 wed 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.