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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 among the most esteemed British photojournalists of his generation.

An International Career

He journeyed the world as a freelance or a employee for major British publications, documenting 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 presidential campaigns. He also created poetic scenic views of the countryside around his Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count some years back. He continued posting archive and recent images daily on social media until a few weeks before his passing, and had been planning to deliver a lecture on his life and work.

Notable Projects

Tales from a turbulent career included an expenses-shredding business class flight in 1991 to reach the funeral in India of the assassinated leader 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 images of the then Labour party leader Neil Kinnock with his wife, Glenys, toppling into the tide on Brighton beach were published across eight columns of a front page, and are regularly reproduced as a striking example of staged photo hubris. His 2016’s 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’ youngest ever staff photographer when he joined the paper 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 considered censorship of his strongest images of famine in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief photographer as the team was assembled to launch a new newspaper. He was instrumental in forming the style of editorial photography that the paper became known for, helping raise the bar for news photography and broadsheet design, in dramatic images covering front and back pages. Among numerous awards, he was named the What the Papers Say photographer of the year in 1990 for his work in eastern Europe recording the fall of communism.

He worked as a freelance after being let go in 1999, and significant 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 personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a moving book, Remembered.

Early Life and Beginnings

Harris was raised in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an electrician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family moved farther east – and up in the world – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to a local secondary modern school, acquiring practical skills in woodwork and metalwork, before departing at 16.

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

Peers and Legacy

Other photographers, often outpaced by him, remembered his work as astonishing. 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 “reimagined the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ peak era”.

Private World

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, 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 went on a driving tour in Europe, posting sunny images of good meals and quality drinks, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His final project, finished a few weeks before his demise, was to transfer his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his preferred archive images he commented on a very young Harris consuming large glasses of wine with the actor Helen Mirren: “What a fortunate life I’ve had – no regrets 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.