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The photographer B. Harris, who passed away aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became among the most esteemed UK documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Career

He journeyed the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street titles, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. He also created poetic landscapes of the countryside 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 archive and new images daily on social media until a few weeks before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Projects

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated 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, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered editing of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in dramatic images covering 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 eastern Europe documenting the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major projects after that 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 raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

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

Peers and Impact

Other photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki Bertroya, 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 road trip in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, completed a few weeks before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a youthful 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 married twice, each union concluded with divorce.

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