🔗 Share this article Esteemed Photographer Brian Harris Life Story: A Life Through the Camera The photojournalist Brian Harris, who passed away aged 73 of cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his generation. An International Career He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for major British publications, covering such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical scenic views of the countryside around his home county of Essex home. According to his estimates he shot more than two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting archive and new images each day on online platforms until a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences. Notable Assignments Stories from a turbulent career featured an costly premium flight in 1991 to reach the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been used to preserve the body. His 1983’s images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of photo-opportunity 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 Highlights He was appointed as 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 almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa. In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to launch a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images filling front and back 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 worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, which resulted in an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered. Early Life and Start Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated 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 metalwork, before departing at 16. At a central London photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his professional career at eastern London local papers before moving on to major publications. Colleagues and Legacy Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”. Private World In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, sharing sunny images of fine dining and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres. His last task, finished a few weeks before his death, was to transfer his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he commented on a youthful Harris drinking large glasses 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 concluded with divorce. He is remembered by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his second marriage, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.