Shooting from the shadows
Brian Harris explains how using a number of satellite printing plants enabled the reproduction of black, which in turn freed photographers to shoot without using flash and gave them a new level of access.
Storyteller: Brian Harris
Date of Story: September, 1986
Location of Story: City Road, London, UK
Location: Outside Cambridge, UK
Date: 6 April, 2016
In the 1970s Brian Harris 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.’
In the spring of 2016 Brian’s book ‘…and then the Prime Minister hit me…’ a 320 page hard back book of images and essays covering his life’s work. The book is currently being printed and bound in England and will be available from mid-late April 2016.