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

An International Career

He travelled the world as a independent or a employee for major British publications, documenting major happenings including the fall of the Berlin Wall, drought and hunger in Ethiopia and Sudan, the conflict in Northern Ireland, battlefields in the Balkan region and across Africa, the aftermath of the Falklands conflict and four US presidential campaigns. Additionally, he produced poetic scenic views of the rural areas around his home county of Essex home.

By his own calculation he took over 2m images, averaging 100 a day, but he stated that figure some years back. He kept sharing historical and recent images each day on social media until a short time before his death, and had been arranging to give a talk on his life and work.

Memorable Assignments

Tales from a rollercoaster career featured an expenses-shredding premium flight in 1991 to attend the burial in India of the assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, where he collapsed from sunstroke and pneumonia and was treated with ice that had been used to preserve 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 carried across multiple columns of a leading page, and are often reprinted as a hideous example of photo-opportunity hubris. His 2016’s memoir, ... And Then the Prime Minister Hit Me, took the title from an exasperated John Major striking him with a rolled-up briefing paper.

Career Highlights

He became the a major newspaper’s most youthful staff photographer when he started there in 1976, at the age of 26, and was based around the world for almost ten years, including reporting of the end of the internal conflict in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He eventually resigned over what he considered censorship of his most powerful images of starvation in Africa.

In 1986 Harris became chief 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 set new standards for news photography and newspaper design, in dramatic images covering multiple pages. Among many awards, he was named 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 major projects thereafter included a year spent capturing cemeteries across the world in 2006 for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which led to an exhibition launched in London – where he gave a personal tour to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh – and a emotional book, Remembered.

Background and Beginnings

Harris was born in eastern London, to Dorothy and Leonard Harris, an technician who later assisted him build a darkroom in the garage. In the mid 1950s, the family relocated farther east – and to a better area – to the Rise Park estate in Romford, Essex. Brian went to Chase Cross secondary modern school, acquiring useful skills in carpentry and metal crafting, before leaving at 16.

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

Colleagues and Legacy

Fellow photographers, often scooped by him, remembered his work as remarkable. A colleague, who worked with him in the initial stages, called him “a great and fearless photographer”, an inspiration to a generation of junior colleagues. Another associate, a union representative, said he “transformed the possibilities of news photography during newspapers’ last golden age”.

Personal Life

In 2001 Harris reconnected through a website with Nikki Bertroya, whom he had first met as a toddler in primary school, and they became inseparable partners through his final decades. After learning of his illness, they went on a road trip in Europe, posting bright images of fine dining and good wine, and returning to significant sites including Dresden and Ypres.

His last task, completed a few weeks before his demise, was to donate his vast archive of five decades of work to a permanent home. Among his favourite historical photos he commented on a very young Harris drinking 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 ended in divorce.

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