Biography

Brian Harris grew up in London but now lives in Suffolk on the Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex borders.

Brian has worked as a staff photographer on The Times of London and was appointed chief photographer of The Independent newspaper when it launched in 1986.

He photographed the end of the civil war in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), the aftermath of the Falklands war, the famine in Ethiopia and the Sudan. He spent 18 months in Eastern Europe documenting the collapse of communism and the fall of the wall in Berlin in 1989. He has covered four Presidential campaigns in the United States and reported on the first elections in Nepal and the death of Rajiv Ghandi in India. Brian also covered political change in France, Germany and Italy as well as the first stirrings of unrest in Serbia and Kosovo.

In 2009 he was asked by Intelligent Life Magazine-part of the Economist group-to return to Berlin to photograph the changes in that city 20 years after the fall of the wall, resulting in a 12 page photo-essay.

Brian has received many awards for his work including the prestigious 'What the papers say' Photographer of the Year award in 1990 for his work in Eastern Europe. He has had several solo exhibitions, notably at the Barbican Arts Centre and at Photofusion gallery, both in London.

His work has been published in many books and he was a contributing photographer for the Council for the Protection of Rural England's 'Legacy' project in the early 1990Õs.

Brian has lectured on his personal photographic vision in the UK, Sweden, Spain and Ireland and has written for various magazines on editorial photographic ethics. The BBC made three documentary programmes about Brian's work and he has contributed to various BBC radio broadcasts including the 'Moral Maze', which he wouldn't recommend to anyone !

Brian now divides his time between commissioned editorial work; personal projects such as Kiss and the Wall; generic stock sold through Alamy and Rex Features and a growing corporate client base where his sensitive unobtrusive fly on the wall documentary style is highly regarded.

He photographed the final days of the London 2012 Olympic bid for Accenture and has recently been photographing real life non contrived situations for Capacity Builders and the Association of Accounting Technicians.

Brian is represented by Melanie Grant at CRE8 for all corporate work.

Brian spent most of 2006 photographing the Remembered project for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. A 90th anniversary celebration of the work the CWGC carry out world wide. The book 'Remembered' published by Merrell and which Brian co-authored with Julie Summers has been a major success. The 'Remembered' exhibitions have toured the world and last year Brian had the honour of escorting HM The Queen around his London show at Canada House.

His passion is photography, he is never without a camera, be it the latest digital confection, his well worn Leica or a cheap disposable. The important thing is what the image says, not how it was created.

Statement

"I moved into Suffolk a couple of years back. For the past 20 years, after leaving central London, I lived all of 13 miles away in Saffron Walden in North West Essex. Another world.

Suffolk, oh sleepy Suffolk, things really do go at a slower pace here. Just over an hour from Docklands in London and 20 minutes from the intellectual stimulus of Cambridge but a whole world away in aspiration and energy.

Suffolk is very much another world, stuck fast in the Britain of the late 1950Õs. Everything takes so much longer to do out here, be it buying a stamp or driving across the county. Suffolk is a combination of old money, incomers such as myself and a hugh social underclass largely based around a declining rural economy.

Since moving here I have noticed the way the different social groups interact. Or rather...don't ! There really is an us and them mentality. At parish level the lower orders live in the 'Low cost housing' while those with money live 'up at Grange farm'. This is real 'Archers' territory. I live in a quintessentially beautiful English Village. We have one pub, there used to be five, a village green where the annual fete is held, a bowls club and a village hall where the Parish Council meet once a month. My partner is Clerk to the council. Most of the houses are thatched apart from the Georgian properties owned by old money. My own house is a tiny estate workers cottage dating from about 1790 but it does have a Wi-Fi set up although many times it is quicker to post a CD of images to a client than rely on the very slow broadband connection. I have heard that there is a mobile signal but have yet to find out where.

My family left the 'smoke' of South Essex in the '70's and moved to North Suffolk, the air was better and property was cheaper. At least the air quality is still quite pure.

My father, my Nan, my Aunt and Uncle and my sisters still born Daughter are all buried in Halesworth cemetery. My Mother and my Sisters family all live in Bungay on the border with Suffolk and Norfolk, so in a way my whole family has completely relocated to this rural idyll, seemingly for eternity.

Constable made the most of the big skies of Suffolk and East Anglia and many artists have followed since. There is a dreamy quality to the light here, similar to that found in Venice. Maybe its the proximity to the sea, maybe the lack of any sizeable polluting industry, whatever, you can see for miles and miles here in Suffolk. A hill top vantage point would be good.

The Suffolk coast stretches from the ports of Harwich and Felixstowe in the south on the border with Essex to Lowestoft in the north bordering Norfolk. Pretty seaside towns like Aldeborough and Southwold are bright pearls along the coast and nowhere is far from the brooding presence of Sizewell Nuclear power station. Dunwich as a town does not exist, it used to be the largest trading port in Britain, but that was 900 years ago. Nowadays Dunwich is home to the best fish 'n chip shop in the country, its where I go two or three times a year for a Sunday treat and a walk along the beach. The fish and chips are served with a nice cup of tea, although if you are discreet you can smuggle a bottle of wine to your outdoor table.

Suffolk is slow, it is sleepy and you do feel detached from the reality of the real world at times but then as IÕm sure many have asked, 'Just what is reality'? "