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

A Global Professional Journey

He journeyed across the globe as a freelance or a employee for Fleet Street publications, covering 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 aftermath of the Falklands conflict and several US election campaigns. He also created lyrical landscapes of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

According to his estimates he shot more than 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He continued posting archive and new images daily on online platforms up to a few weeks before his passing, and had been arranging to deliver a lecture on his career and experiences.

Memorable Assignments

Stories from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to attend the funeral in India of the slain politician Rajiv Gandhi, where he fainted from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been used to preserve the body.

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

Professional Highlights

He was appointed as the a major newspaper’s youngest ever staff photographer when he started there 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 saw as editing of his most powerful images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a major newspaper. He played a key role in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper was famous for, helping raise the bar for press images and newspaper design, in striking 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 recording the collapse of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being made redundant in 1999, and significant projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the war memorial organisation, 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.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later helped his son construct a photo lab in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park housing estate in Romford, Essex. Brian attended a local secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in woodwork and metalwork, before departing at 16.

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

Colleagues and Impact

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, recalled his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the initial stages, described him as “a superb and fearless photographer”, an influence to a cohort 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 made contact through a online service with Nikki, whom he had first met as a three-year-old in infant school, and they became close companions through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they embarked on a driving tour in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and revisiting significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, finished a few weeks before his death, was to donate his vast archive of 55 years’ work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a very young Harris consuming 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 wed twice, each union concluded with divorce.

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