Fragile Beauty: Sir Elton John and David Furnish’s photography collection – aestheticizing and gutting the human

Written by Avigayil Ashton

The human, political and aesthetic – an indulgent look into fashion, flesh, and humanity. Fragile Beauty showcases 300 rare prints from 140 photographers on loan from the private collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish, displayed at the V&A until January 2025. Assembling some of the world’s leading photographers from 1950 to the present, the exhibition explores pivotal harrowing political moments in a fantastic tour into the human condition.

The exhibition stretches deep into the V&A, crawling through a maze of rooms divided into eight sections. Beautifully curated photographs of nude, posed women fill the walls, images we have grown accustomed to. The exhibition’s promise of ‘iconic images and subjects of the male body’ seem lost to dated radical images of topless women as in Rudi Gerneich, Topless Swimsuit, 1964 dominating initially.

Figure 1: Left: Richard Avedon (1923-2004), William Claxton 9921-2008. Right: Peggy Moffitt in Rudi Gernreich, Topless Swimsuit, 1964, inkjet. View at the V&A ‘Fragile Beauty’ Exhibition, London. Image taken by Avigayil Ashton 2024.

The strikingly beautiful yet soft fashion photographs served as a strong aesthetic introduction that gently cradled you as it approached more strident work. Celebrity portraiture pulls you into the world of striking contemporary American portraiture photography. However, a collection owned by celebrities and briefly orbiting around them does carry the same fatigue one may feel consuming in a world full of celebrity interviews, adverts and media. A charismatic series of photographs of Chet Baker by Avedon, William Claxton and Herman Leonard showcase the fantastic architecture of the space, placed just beside a portkey where, Topless Swimsuit is framed calling back to the scandal and elegance of the previous room. This reminder preempts  the end of this section as it dips into investigations of identity and an introduction to body politics. Susan Meiselas’ ephemeral Self Portrait, 1971 sits opposite the imposingly large Self Portrait, 2000 of Gillian Wearing. Mieselas’ portrait investigates feeling invisible and Wearing’s disconcerting prosthetic mask invokes a masquerade of another self as the exhibition begins its descent into one's connection with the body. Michael Halsband’s famous Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat #143, 1985 begins to tantalise themes of fame, economics and race with the famous collaboration, filled with turbulence. This soft introduction hints at the many photographs to come with similar tensions for our voyeuristic pleasure.

Figure 2: Inside the 'Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection' exhibition. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photograph taken from V&A, ‘About the Fragile Beauty Exhibition.’

The next section, ‘Desire’ with its rich red walls assembles the couple’s passion for homoerotic and queer photography. Desire presents the assemblage of representations of the male form from ‘subtle’ studio portraiture of the 1950s’ to the explicitly revealing shots of contemporary portraiture. This room exposes the public to erotic and raw explorations of the male form, with its ‘scandalous’ photography. Poignant images such as the works of Robert Mapplethorpe and Peter Hujar are displayed, having come to prominence in the early years of the gay rights movement the V&A described their works to ‘shatter the oppressive stereotypes and reveal their queerness’.  Mapplethorpe’s photographs are soft, black and white prints without faces. They offer glimpses of the male form in what is described on the wall plaque as ‘a manifestation of the divine’ (V&A, 2024). The stills play on soft, subtle shadowing and invoke a gently erotic gaze upon men which is rarely seen in popular portraiture. A selection of Hujar’s nude body in motion from the series Nude Self-Portraits, 1966 extend the examination of the male form in fluid succession further expanding the framing of the male body. Turning the corner, one is confronted with one of the most striking photographs from this collection, Ryan Mc Ginley’s raw self-documentation of two men having sex in Having Sex (Polaroids), 1999   remains relevant in a society plagued with homophobia. His playful, intimate scene backed by hundreds of polaroids of peers offers a balancing sexual scene, refreshing in the sea of most contemporary representations of sex through often violent and performative pornography. The exhibition has a healthy balance of architecturally curated photos of the human form with the gutted and raw images of our most human moments.

The exhibition continues with its accumulation of harrowing sociopolitical photographs, with John and Furnish’s passion of photojournalism showcased within this room. Beginning with photographs from the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, the freedom struggle of discrimination with Americas youth mobilised to end racial segregation alongside that against the US bombings of Vietnam, the AIDS crisis and terrorist attacks of 11thSeptember 2001. Of these works included the off-kilter style of Robert Frank with the photo Trolley – New Orleans, 1955. Franks photos often ‘puncture the image of post-war prosperity’, revealing Americas divided society ‘profoundly at odds with itself’. Then along comes Ai Weiwei’s Protesting Doctors, AIDS Parade, from the series New York Photographs, 1989. Ai Weiwei lived in New York city for ten years from 1983 documenting doctors fighting insurance and pharmaceutical companies ‘for better patient-cantered care during the height of the AIDs epidemic’(V&A, 2024).  These harrowing photographs encapsulate the scary, desperate times of the period and the battle with AIDS and the care that could be provided. They remain, perhaps, a mirror to American society’s current crisis in the medical care available. This room houses several famous images already residing in public consciousness including Richard Drews The Falling Man, a famous photograph perfectly composed, capturing the shot of an unidentified man leaping from the burning World Trade Centre desperately trying to escape the terror attack of 9/11.  This photograph documents and immortalises an unforgettable moment of American history, somewhat voyeuristically? Depicting pain and suffering, how much access we should have to these moments oscillating between educational significance and raw human agony? Perhaps that’s why they are so compelling and necessary. The section of the exhibition was concluded, somewhat aptly with Ryan McGinley’s Sam(Ground Zero), 11 September 2001, capturing his friend Sam cycling towards the event through debris and ash on the day of the attack, put aptly by the V&A wall plaque, ‘suggesting the desire to investigate an event that would come to define the experience of a generation’(V&A, 2024). So, our voyeuristic thirst continues.

Figure 3, Inside the 'Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection' exhibition. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Photograph taken from V&A, ‘About the Fragile Beauty Exhibition.’

The next section ‘Fragile Beauty’, from which the show takes its title, is a sensuous and exposed reflection of the vulnerable. It explores child and adult prostitution, sex, and addiction through the harrowing works of Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin. John is particularly passionate about Nan Goldin’s installation, Thanksgiving, comprised of 149 different prints taken over 1973 to 1999, a shrine to friends and lovers snapping moments capturing their experience of AIDS, sex, addiction and abuse. Stripped back and pieced together in this installation they encapsulate sadness and ecstasy with hints of wistful moments and tinged with pain.  Here a climax presents itself, culminating in the brutal representations of moment a Pregnant woman injects amphetamine captured by Larry Clark and the portrait of Tiny, a 14-year-old child exploited for prostitution captured by Mary Ellen Mark.

The white walls of ‘Fragile Beauty’ are proceeded with a detonation of colour and whimsy in the penultimate room ‘Constructed Images’.  This section indulges in the big, bold world of photographs since the technological advancements of 1970 integrating the worlds of fashion, film and advertising. Elton John and David Furnish’s insight into the construction of a spectacle resonate strongly with the ‘theatricality and playfulness’ of these works, with Elton John starring in one of these photos by David LaChapelle, Elton John: Egg On His Face, 1999, a large, cohesive flamboyant portrait capturing Johns playfully extravagant style. Pyongyang II, 2007 by Andreas Gursky invokes the same saturated, carefully composed nature of John’s portrait yet captures the meticulously choreographed gymnastics and placards held by North Korean children in a ‘mosaic of colour’ frozen in a perfectly synchronized moment in time. Concluding with ‘Collecting Now’ John and Furnish showcase their most recent acquisitions, keen to display the beautiful works of African American artists such as Zanele Muhol and their emphasis on Black queer visibility, the fashioned headdress and striking shadows emanating strength and beauty an image for ‘those fighting discrimination’(V&A, 2024).

Elton John: Egg On His Face, New York, David LaChapelle, 1999, Photograph from V&A, https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/fragile-beauty-photographs-from-the-sir-elton-john-and-david-furnish-collection?srsltid=AfmBOoq_jdm1bKaeB0--x-CnP0vbZK1WHAfTHJpUgsgXZs8cx9uG8YRt

‘Fragile Beauty’, culminates in themes of intense beauty, creativity and vulnerability.  It is a fantastic collection of some of the most striking images of contemporary history examining community and scrutinising intolerance, immortalising humanity in its most fantastical and at its most painful. When reviewing a celebrity’s collection, my initial response to hearing about the exhibition was one of indifference – reminding me of the fatigue of celebrity culture and the invasive nature of their parasocial grip on us as fans and consumers. However, in this instance, Elton John is the connecting factor allowing for the cohesion of such an exhibition, which his personal lived experience and pioneering flamboyant contributions to music is precisely what weaves the carefully curated selection of works into the cohesive spectacle it is. Signed off with a big glittery ‘E’, the exhibition is a letter to the viewer through recent history and is one to be reread.

Victoria and Albert Museum. ‘About the Fragile Beauty Exhibition · V&A’. https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/about-the-fragile-beauty-exhibition.