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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died at the age of 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become among the most esteemed British photojournalists of his generation.

An International Career

He travelled across the globe as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street publications, covering such events as the collapse of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, war zones in the Balkans and across Africa, the consequences of the Falklands war and several US presidential campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over 2m photographs, taking an average of 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on social media up to a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career featured an costly business class flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke 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 hideous example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He was appointed as the Times’ youngest ever staff photographer when he started there 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 later stepped down over what he saw as editing 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 major newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in dramatic 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 collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and major projects thereafter included a year spent photographing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, 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 emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and up in the world – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, before leaving at 16.

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

Colleagues and Impact

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, described him as “a great and fearless photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, 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, whom he had first met 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, sharing sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to important sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a short time before his death, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite historical photos he commented on a youthful Harris drinking generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate 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.