🔗 Share this article Brian Harris Obituary: A Life Behind the Camera The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his generation. An International Career He journeyed the world as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home. By his own calculation he shot more than 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing historical and recent images each day on online platforms until a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work. Notable Projects Tales from a turbulent career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the slain politician 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’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling 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, took the title from an exasperated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper. Career Milestones He became the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper 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 most powerful images of famine in Africa. In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to launch a major newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for press images and broadsheet design, in striking images filling front and back 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 fall of communism. He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 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 Start Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son build a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16. At a Fleet Street photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern London local papers before moving on to major publications. Peers and Impact Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”. Personal Life In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service 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 driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of fine dining and good wine, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres. His last task, finished a short time before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a youthful Harris drinking generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no remorse and no ‘Must Do’s’”. He was wed twice, each union ended in divorce. He is remembered by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.