Brian Harris – Photographer

From the Freemanview archives – 2009 to 2013 
One of the best-known names in British news photography, Brian Harris began his career in 1969 as a messenger for a Fleet Street press agency. After working for local newspapers in East London, and freelancing, he moved to the Times in 1976 as a staff photographer, staying until a major disagreement over his coverage of the Sudan famine in 1984. When the Independent was launched in 1986, Brian was appointed its Chief Photographer; the newspaper’s refreshing use of photography showcased his strong and typically minimal composition, coupled with a fine sense of timing, especially for expression and gesture. He remained until 1999, and since then has been freelance.
Brian Harris’s roll call of events includes the civil war in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, the aftermath of the Falklands War, famines in Ethiopia and Sudan, every British election in the last two decades, as well as four US Presidential campaigns, the first elections in Nepal, the death of Rajiv Ghandi in India, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989
 
MF: You’ve had a distinguished career in British photojournalism, and surely one of the high points must have been your appointment as Chief Photographer for the Independent when it launched. In those days, the Independent seemed to represent a brave new world of print journalism, and its photography policy reflected that. What seems to have changed at the newspaper picture desks in the years since?
Brian Harris: Look, what you have to realise is that way back in 1986 when the Indy launched we were all busking it in one way or another. There was no rule book. For the first few months there was not as much advertising as would have been liked, so our images were used somewhat larger than some of them should have been. We started to get noticed for having big ballsy images and our readers reacted very positively, some writing to the editor   (Andreas Whittam-Smith) saying the main reason they brought the paper was for its pictures. He asked me one day why the British Press didn’t use images as well as did the continental press, such as Liberation, a French left wing daily. I responded that it was all about trust, trust from the editor that the photographer would have the skills, both photographic and intellectual, to be able to give an honest and completely truthful account.

MF: And there wasn’t normally that trust?
BH: On many other papers the photographers were shut away in the photographers room, thick with cigarette smoke and awash with dirty supper plates from the previous night’s late shift. There would always be the ubiquitous dart board and conversation started and ended with how to sting the management on expenses claims. Members of Parliament could have learnt a trick or two from Fleet Street’s finest in the 1970′s and 80′s. In a way, with some very notable exceptions on every paper, the photographers were their own worst enemy. Although many had fantastic skills in pulling the proverbial ‘visual’ rabbit out of the hat when needed, many were kept on as little more than glorified taxi drivers to the reporters. Photographers resented this and made management pay, and of course little by little management saw through this, and in the end we all paid the ultimate price including those at the Indy where there is not one news photographer left on staff, all gone, zip.
At the start, though, it was different and fresh. Many of us had been through the higher education process, some through art school, one was trained as a barrister, one was a dentist, one had a PPE from Oxford; for my part I had 5 GCE O Levels. Note here that not one of the eight staffers or contract freelancers had qualified in photography. Photography to us all was intuitive, the technical stuff learnt from a book, the practical stuff learnt from making mistakes, but, we were all story tellers. We all wanted to tell a story…and in our case we told it using photography.
 
MF: So the era of the staff photographer is really over? Has stock photography won?
BH: The major subscription agencies have cleaned up, Reuters, Getty, PA, AP all supply top quality, visually stunning news and feature images day in day out. Stock agencies such as Alamy supply the bread and butter generic photographic illustrations and small agencies such as Rex Features supply good quality celebrity work. Why have a photographer on staff with his expensive company car, his salary of 50k plus, insurance, camera gear and laptop, holidays, days off, fancy hotels when on the road? Why indeed ? Well, the main reason, as I see it, is individuality and style. If you examine the main papers today, Tabs as well as broadsheets, with the honourable exception of the Guardian and Times who both have many committed staffers and contract freelancers, there is very little style, no individuality. One paper morphs into another and this is one of the problems that newspaper management face with declining sales all around, how to make your product distinct from the competition. Its all very well throwing in top by-lined writers on huge contracts, its all very well giving away CDs of music or films that no-one wants, but one thing that is missing is just how the paper looks, its commitment to the reader, value for money, something different — and that is where beautifully crafted, intelligently made visual journalism comes in. Most editors don’t see it. They see the written word as the be-all and end-all of journalism, with photography as a bolt-on, a bit extra, an illustration. When the Independent started, that was what we tried to turn around and. With our brilliant, committed team under an enlightened editor, positive intelligent picture editors such as Alun John and Christopher McKane and a superb design team led by Mike Crozier, we tried. And up to a point we succeeded; it was a unique time. I equate it to being on Picture Post during  the heydays of the 1940′s under Stefan Lorant, or being on Life magazine in say the 1960′ and early 70′s.I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
 
MF: One of the reasons I wanted to talk to you here on the OCA site is that you’ve inhabited one of the roughest and most demanding areas of photography. Every photography student has a list of commitments — images they need to take to meet a certain deadline — but the pressure doesn’t compare with what you had to do when you worked on elections, for example. What’s that pressure like, when you have to deliver within an hour or two and nothing’s laid out on a plate for you?
BH: In a word, planning. Thinking ahead, allowing for the cock up. When you’re on the road, the first thing you check is your communications — do they work ? Then, preparation. The great Robert Fisk told me that you always tip hotel staff as you check in, room service, doorman, garage valet, the lot. And I do. Then the people who can oil the wheels when they get rusty or stuck, all know you and are a little in debt to you. They will help PDQ as they will anticipate some more of your generosity (paid for, one hopes, by your client or newspaper). Part of planning is to get ahead of the game, anticipate what your end user wants and when, and just maybe hold a little something back for a rainy day.
Here’s one example of what I mean, which should give you the flavour of news photojournalism. I was covering a French election many years ago, well before digital. The Independent wanted a picture of President Mitterrand giving his speech. He was due to start at the election meeting in a large tent in a field near Toulouse at about 9 pm. My office needed a picture within half an hour. I arrived early, at 2 pm, and parked my car right next to the meeting tent and press area. I sorted out some processing space using a changing bag to load up the ONE roll of film I knew I would shoot. I then connected my enormous Nikon transmitting machine to the ONE external international line and hid my contraption with the phone dismantled under some cardboard boxes and rubbish. I photographed the first five minutes of his speech (he used to go on for about 2 hours) and quickly developed my film in some jungle juice, drying the film stretched between 2 chairs using meths and a match. I was getting some very strange looks!
About this time I started to hear some of my fellow international journalists shouting in many foreign tongues, ‘where’s the bloody outside line?’ I crawled under the table to my secreted transmitter and made the connection to London. My picture went over the wire in 3 minutes and I made my deadline. I crawled out of my hidey hole to be surrounded by a hostile bunch of fellow hacks baying for blood. One Dior-clad beauty started towards me in a threatening way. I gave her a handful of bits of telephone and wires and shrugged, as you are allowed to do in France, and walked away. Not a great way of improving entente cordial but I did what I was paid to do.
My best images, though, were made two hours later, with the President, sweat in rivulets draining down his face, giving it his all. My paper used that image a few days later as the definitive Mitterrand image and I won an award in World Press with the picture.
But then, as you ask, things quite often don’t go as smoothly as you’d like, and then you have to adapt. Back in 1988, I was shooting the US Presidential election campaign, all ready and in position for the arrival of Michael Dukakis. Then, minutes before, this huge American pool-photographer plants himself right in front of me … and won’t budge. Well, I tell that story on Graham Harrison’s excellent site — with the picture that I got…
 

Michael Dukakis on the campaign trail
 
MF: Artist-photographers, if I can use that term, have considerably more slack in terms of time, choice, and pressure to deliver. On the face of it, that sounds like real luxury, but I wonder. I seem to remember reading that when Brett Weston first visited London, and was being taken around by the picture editor of the Times, the only thing that stimulated him was a patch of rusted flaking iron on London Bridge, so that’s all he shot. Sounds like a miserable waste of opportunity to me. Have you ever found that by being forced to deliver whether you liked it or not, that you made images you hadn’t expected but were later proud of?
BH: No. But I can see where you are coming from, I think. I make pictures all the time, every day, on commission or not. I couldn’t conceive of not going out of the front door without a camera. I walk the streets, looking, searching. I work quickly, one maybe two frames and move on. I don’t want anyone to see me. I have been shooting pictures of couples kissing over the past few years which has produced some nice unguarded moments from around the world — I haven’t been punched on the nose yet!

Kiss on a pensioners’ day trip
 
Street imagery is what I really like. There is a great history of street photography and I’m just doing my bit. Maybe some of them will sell or publish one day… maybe… but that’s not why I do it. I do it because I want to record, not just the big stuff, I want to record the ordinary but in an extraordinary way. I’m still trying, when you stop trying, well, that’s the end, finish, bye bye. Go and be a shelf stacker in a supermarket somewhere.
 
MF: Staying with this theme for a little longer, you were exposed to that divide between photography-as-art and photography-as-the-real-world, weren’t you? I’m thinking of the time when you stirred the nest at the Royal College of Art by passing some fairly trenchant comments about the degree show one year, as you can still read about on the Independent site.
 
BH: Yep, that was then and now is now. I was, up to a point, provoked into writing that piece by an editor at the Indy massaging my ego and brushing up my halo. I could and should have said NO… but I didn’t. Hey ho. Now that I’m out of main stream news photography I see imagery very differently. I just spent a week in Florence gorging on Quatrocento art, I look at things differently, I ask different questions of myself, and maybe my own imagery will benefit as a result.  My images now are quieter, less ‘ wham bang’, I hope more subtle, maybe more real. Who am I to say?

The work that has given me probably the greatest pleasure recently has been for The Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the Remembered project.

The work has been exhibited worldwide and a beautiful book has been published; last year I had the honour of escorting the Queen around one of the London shows of my work.

 
MF: Your early career was strongly black-and-white because of the newspapers, but now you work in both colour and monochrome. Do you have preferences according to type of subject? Indeed, do you have a preference for one or the other?
BH: Interesting, the first pictures I took, apart from those on my Instamatic 50 (that’s the one one with a sunny and a cloudy bright setting!) were in colour. I shot on Kodachrome on my trusty Practica. I well remember dashing home from school at lunch time to find the little yellow box waiting for me on the doormat. I would give myself a slide show  while cooking lunch. Black-and-white began when I started shooting Saturday football for my local papers. My dad built me a great darkroom in the garden, heated and with running water. I would cover three or four matches, using a bus to commute between grounds. Then, in the evening I would dev and print up a few sets, and on Sunday morning I would hand deliver to the local papers. I received one pound 10 shillings a publication; sometimes I would get half a dozen hits. Good money at the time in 1969.
I can honestly say I’m not that fussed any more about working in colour or black-and-white. I used to be, and I’m aware that I will always be known for my black-and-white material at the Indy, but that was then and now is now. Saying that, last week I made a picture of my local Parish Council meeting, didge, colour, it just didn’t look right, so I drained away the colour in Photoshop. Much better.