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The photojournalist B. Harris, who has died at the age of 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a employee for major British titles, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot over two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He kept sharing historical and recent images daily on online platforms until a few weeks before his passing, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career included an costly premium flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been used to preserve 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 leading page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major striking him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional Milestones

He became the Times’ most youthful staff photographer when he started there 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 censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to create a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was named 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 resulted in an display launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son construct a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

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

Peers and Impact

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed 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 close companions through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his death, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos he commented on a very young Harris drinking large glasses 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 ended in divorce.

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