The Wall is Breatched by Brian Harris

Brian Harris (1952-2025) was an editorial, news and current affairs photographer for more than 47 years.

Fascinated in his teens by the alchemy of the darkroom in the 1960s Brian started to combine his school work with photographing weddings and football matches in his native Essex. A job as a runner at the Fox Photos agency at the age of sixteen set Brian on the path that would shape his life.

In the 1970s Brian worked in the heart of London’s Fleet Street, freelancing for The Sun, The Times, News of the World, the BBC and United Press International, covering everything from IRA bombings to celebrity news, until joining The Times as its youngest ever staff photographer aged twenty-five. When The Independent launched in 1986, Brian became its first staff photographer, playing a key role in forming the renowned Indy style of intelligent editorial photography. In his fourteen years at The Independent Brian travelled the world to cover the stories that defined the era.

Since going freelance in 1999, Brian has staged several solo exhibitions, notably at Photofusion Photography Centre, and has contributed to exhibitions organised by the British Press Photographers’ Association. In 2006-7 he collaborated with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission on Remembered, a major illustrated book of his photographs and series of international touring exhibitions chronicling the CWGC’s work caring for the graves of over 1.7 million Commonwealth war dead.

The BBC has made three short documentaries about his working methods and he has debated live on Radio 4’s The Moral Maze: ‘An experience more terrifying than walking through a minefield on the Falkland Islands.’

Brian lived with his partner Nikki near Cambridge in East Anglia and contribute generic imagery to various agencies as well as generating original photographic essays such as his recent coverage of the First World War battlefield in Europe to coincide with the 100th anniversary of WWI-1914-1918.