🔗 Share this article

The photographer B. Harris, who has died aged 73 from cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and eventually became one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his generation.

An International Career

He journeyed the world as a independent or a employee for Fleet Street titles, documenting 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 four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took more than two million images, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure several years ago. He continued posting historical and recent images each day on social media up to a short time before his death, and had been arranging to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from heatstroke 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, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are regularly reproduced as a hideous example of staged photo 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 Milestones

He was appointed as 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 almost ten years, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered editing of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was put together to create a new newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in striking images covering front and back pages. Among numerous 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 worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which led to 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 construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning practical skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a Fleet Street agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and began his working life at east London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Peers and Legacy

Other photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. Nick Turpin, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, called him “a superb and brave photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a freelance organiser, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they went on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of fine dining and quality drinks, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred historical photos he reflected on a very young Harris consuming 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, each union ended in divorce.

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