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The photographer Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and went on to become one of the most respected UK photojournalists of his era.

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and several US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing archive and recent images daily on online platforms until a short time before his death, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Projects

Tales from a turbulent 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 cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, was named after an exasperated John Major hitting him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Career Milestones

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 reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to launch a major newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was honoured as 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 personal tour to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and to a better area – 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 Fleet Street photo agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his professional career at east London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Colleagues and Impact

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they went on a driving tour in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals 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 extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a youthful Harris consuming 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 survived by Nikki, his son Jacob, from his later union, Nikki’s daughter, Holly, and by his sister, Jan.