🔗 Share this article

The photographer B. Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became one of the most respected British photojournalists of his era.

A Global Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for major British titles, documenting such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting historical and new images each day on social media up to a short time before his passing, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding 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 treated 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, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried 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 folded briefing paper.

Professional 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 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 considered editing of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to launch a new 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 broadsheet design, in striking images covering multiple 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 documenting the fall of communism.

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

Background and Beginnings

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

At a Fleet Street photo agency, he rose rapidly from messenger boy to photographer, and launched his working life at eastern London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Peers and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

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 embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of good meals and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred historical photos he reflected on a very young 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 ended in divorce.

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