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

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a independent or a staffer for Fleet Street publications, covering major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, famine in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and four US election campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot over two million images, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing historical and new images each day on online platforms up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to give a talk on his life and work.

Memorable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career featured 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 used to preserve the body.

His 1983’s images of the at that time Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, falling into the sea on Brighton beach were carried across eight columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major hitting him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Professional 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 nearly a decade, including coverage of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he saw as censorship of his strongest images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris was made head photographer as the team was assembled to create a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in striking images covering 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 recording the collapse of communism.

He operated independently after being let go 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 led to an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Start

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him construct a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family moved farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

At a central London photo agency, he quickly advanced from messenger boy to photographer, and began his professional career at eastern London local papers before progressing to major publications.

Colleagues and Impact

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

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a online service with Nikki, whom he had first met 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, sharing bright images of fine dining and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a short time before his death, was to donate his extensive collection of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his preferred historical photos he commented on a youthful 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 married twice, both marriages concluded with divorce.

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