Photojournalist who covered the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the collapse of communism in eastern Europe
The photographer Brian Harris, who has died aged 73 of cancer, left school at 16 to become a messenger boy, and went on to become one of the most respected British photojournalists of his generation.
He travelled the world as a freelance or a staffer for Fleet Street titles including the Times, the Independent (where he was the founding chief photographer), the Sun and the Guardian, covering such events as 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 aftermath of the Falklands war and four US presidential campaigns, including Bill Clinton’s. He also created lyrical landscapes of the countryside around his Essex home.
By his own calculation he took more than 2m photographs, averaging 100 a day, but he made that count several years ago. He continued posting archive and new images daily on social media up to a few weeks before his death, and had been planning to give a talk on his life and work at an event organised by the British Press Photographers’ Association, of which he was a founder member.
