🔗 Share this article

The photographer B. Harris, who passed away at the age of 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed British documentary photographers of his era.

An International Career

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a staffer for major British publications, covering major happenings including the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkan region and throughout Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he took more than two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He kept sharing archive and new images each day on social media until a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983 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 leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of photo-opportunity 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 was appointed as the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he started there 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 later stepped down over what he saw as editing of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was put together to create a new newspaper. He played a key role in shaping the style of journalistic photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for press images and newspaper design, in striking images covering multiple pages. Among many awards, he was named the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the fall of communism.

He operated independently after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent capturing 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.

Early Life and Start

Harris was born in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him construct a darkroom 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 practical skills in carpentry and metalwork, before departing at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern London local papers before moving on to national publications.

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the early days, called him “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they went on a road trip in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and good wine, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred historical photos he commented on a very young Harris drinking generous servings 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, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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