Esteemed Photographer Brian Harris Obituary: An Existence Behind the Lens

The photographer Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his era.

A Global Career

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing historical and new images each day on online platforms until a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an costly business class flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

His 1983’s 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 leading 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 rolled-up briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He became the Times’ most youthful 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 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 put together to create a major newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for news photography and newspaper design, in striking images covering 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 eastern Europe recording the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent capturing 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.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated farther east – 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 metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of fine dining and good wine, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, completed a few weeks before his demise, was to donate his extensive collection of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a very young Harris consuming generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”.

He was wed twice, both marriages ended in divorce.

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