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The photographer B. Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, ended his schooling at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became among the most esteemed UK photojournalists of his era.

An International Career

He journeyed the world as a freelance or a employee for major British publications, covering such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting historical and new images daily on social media up to a short time before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work.

Memorable Projects

Tales from a rollercoaster career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an irritated John Major striking him with a folded briefing paper.

Career 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 almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he saw as censorship of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to launch a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images filling front and back pages. Among many awards, he was honoured as the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc documenting the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects after that 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 private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was born in east 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 eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his professional career at east London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “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’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had initially encountered as a toddler in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his remaining years. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a road trip in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a few weeks before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a youthful Harris consuming 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 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.