‘Fragile Beauty’: Elton John’s photography collection comes to Paris
The glamour and hedonism of the 1980s, sexual freedom and the tragedy of AIDS, objectified female beauty and celebrated male nudity, the provocation of color and the simplicity of black and white, political activism and fashion.
This is the portrait of an era presented by “Fragile Beauty,” or “Bellezza Fragile,” an exhibition featuring a major selection from the extraordinary photography collection of Sir Elton John and his husband, David Furnish, CE Report quotes ANSA.
Produced by the Victoria and Albert Museum and curated by Duncan Forbes, the exhibition runs until September 27 at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. It brings together more than 300 prints selected from the more than 7,000 photographs in the collection, considered one of the largest of its kind in the world.
The exhibition features photographs dating from 1950 to the present day, tracing the history of modern and contemporary photography across the 20th and 21st centuries. The works are arranged into five thematic sections — desire, celebrity, fashion, reportage and the assertion of identities — which clearly reflect the highly personal tastes of the two collectors.
On display are works by more than 90 leading photographers, including Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe, Herb Ritts, Harley Weir, Irving Penn, Ai Weiwei and many others.
It all began around 1991, when Elton John’s passion for collecting photography first took hold. His own colorful and surreal portrait opens the exhibition. Initially, his attention was drawn to fashion photography: highly polished images characterized by icy beauty and statuesque models.
Then came portraits of stars, where, paradoxically, vulnerability takes center stage, etched onto the faces of icons ranging from the Beatles to Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day and Elvis Presley, as well as Miles Davis and Chet Baker. Together, the portraits reveal the myths and passions that fascinate the collector couple.
The male body receives considerable attention, with the “Fragile Beauty” section placing the work of Nan Goldin and Robert Mapplethorpe at its heart — two artists regarded as heroic figures by Elton John and David Furnish.
At the center is Nan Goldin’s irreverent “Thanksgiving” installation, a monumental work composed of 149 Cibachrome prints that envelop the room from floor to ceiling.
Created between 1973 and 1999, the work is a detailed, exalted, exhilarating and at times dramatic account of the artist’s intimate life between Boston and New York, capturing everything and everyone around her without filters: friends and lovers, many of whom have since died, in a story of extraordinary intensity.
In this sense, the exhibition is, beneath its glamorous surface, also a celebration of freedom and of the right to express oneself through the forms and ways that feel most natural and meaningful to each individual.
From the private, photography then becomes public in the final section, devoted to reportage, where some of the most significant moments in contemporary history are captured, from the civil rights movement of the 1960s to September 11.
Ultimately, this is an exhibition that is both mischievous and serious, dazzling and dark at the same time — a place where everyone can find their own story and their own path within the exhilarating contradictions that have shaped the past century.
Photo: Victoria and Albert Museum
