Exhibition of photographs from Elton John collection opens in London

By Alimat Aliyeva

British musician Elton John, who loves collecting photographs, is preparing for the opening of the exhibition "Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish" at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, Azernews reports.

The audience will find an unprecedented selection of the world's leading photographers telling the story of modern photography, which is a kind of continuation of the exhibition "Radical View", organized in 2016 by the London Tate Modern gallery, which covered the period of modernist photography from the 1920s to the 1950s.

The exhibition features 300 works by 140 different photographers, and its subject matter is very diverse. From fashion to photojournalism, from celebrity portraits to abstraction. Sir Elton John chose a title referring to how vulnerability can inspire creativity, and how a camera can capture these moments in time.

The 77-year-old musician has been collecting pictures since the 1990s. This exhibition tells about the beginning of collecting in the nineties, when Elton John bought "sketches of fashion" by Horst P. Horst, Irving Penn and Herb Ritts, and about the most recent purchase: a portrait of the Californian beekeeper Richard Avedon, who opens the exhibition.

The curators have done an excellent job of translating a very personal collection, which totals 7,000 images, into a gallery space for the general public. To give the show a special shape, the curators divided it into nine sections, each theme of which has its own color palette on the walls.

According to Elton John himself, he caught his breath when he saw his collection on the walls of the historical museum: "I did not see many of them hanging properly or hanging at all. And so, walking, I see that they were so beautifully hung. I am very happy."

The exhibition "Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish" in partnership with Gucci will run from May 18, 2024 to January 5, 2025 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.