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The photojournalist Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to work as a courier, and eventually became one of the most respected UK documentary photographers of his generation.

A Global Professional Journey

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for major British titles, covering such events as the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkans and throughout Africa, the consequences of the Falklands conflict and four US election campaigns. Additionally, he produced lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he shot more than 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting historical and recent images daily on social media until a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a rollercoaster career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from heatstroke and pneumonia and was cooled down with ice that had been employed to cool the body.

His 1983’s images of the at that time 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 striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016 memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an irritated John Major hitting him with a folded briefing paper.

Career Milestones

He became the Times’ most youthful 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 civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He later stepped down over what he saw as censorship of his strongest images of famine 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 shaping the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping set new standards for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering 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 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 display launched in London – where he gave a private viewing to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Early Life and Start

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son construct a darkroom 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 a local secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

At a Fleet Street photo agency, he quickly advanced from delivery boy to photographer, and launched his working life at eastern London local papers before progressing to national publications.

Peers and Impact

Fellow photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who collaborated with him in the initial stages, described him as “a superb and brave photographer”, an influence to a cohort of young colleagues. Tim Dawson, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris made contact through a online service with Nikki, whom he had initially encountered as a three-year-old in primary school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After receiving his terminal diagnosis, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, sharing bright images of good meals and good wine, and returning to significant 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 preferred archive images he commented on a very young Harris consuming generous servings of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a blessed life I’ve had – no regrets 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.