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

A Global Career

He journeyed the world as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street titles, covering major happenings including the fall 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 several US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot more than two million photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He kept sharing archive and recent images daily on social media until a few weeks before his death, and had been arranging to give a talk on his career and experiences.

Notable Assignments

Tales from a turbulent career featured an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was treated 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, toppling into the sea on Brighton beach were published across multiple columns of a front 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.

Professional Milestones

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s youngest ever 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 later stepped down over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a major newspaper. He was instrumental in shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping set new standards for news photography and newspaper design, in striking images filling multiple pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the industry-recognised photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in the former Eastern Bloc recording the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go 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 the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was raised in east London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later helped his son build a darkroom in the garage. In the 1950s, the family relocated eastwards – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended Chase Cross secondary modern school, learning practical skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before departing at 16.

At a central London agency, he rose rapidly from delivery boy to photographer, and began his working life at eastern London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Peers and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, recalled his work as astonishing. Nick Turpin, who worked with him in the early days, called him “a great and brave photographer”, an influence to a generation of junior colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed 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 toddler in infant school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, posting bright images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, completed a short time before his death, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a long-term repository. Among his favourite archive images he reflected on a very young Harris drinking 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, each union ended in divorce.

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