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The photographer Brian Harris, who has died 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 UK documentary photographers of his era.

An International Career

He travelled the world as a freelance or a staffer for major British publications, documenting major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and several US presidential campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot more than two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he made that count 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 Assignments

Tales from a rollercoaster career featured an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated 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, falling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced 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 hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Professional Milestones

He became the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he joined the paper in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for nearly a decade, including reporting of the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as censorship of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in striking images filling multiple 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 worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing 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 moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a photo lab in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, learning useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his working life at east London local papers before moving on to major publications.

Colleagues and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. A colleague, who worked with him in the early days, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a website with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his demise, was to transfer his extensive collection of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos 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, both marriages ended in divorce.

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