Sir Elton John, a keen collector of fine art 20th-century photographs, gives us an exclusive tour of some of his favourites

For Sir Elton John, photography can be sexy, menacing, revolutionary, inspirational or moving. Here, he explains his passion for the art form and highlights his own personal favourites from a collection he has spent decades accumulating

Man Ray: Glass Tears, 1932 As a teenager I was always drawn to this image. I had this as a poster, never knowing that one day I would actually own it. I started collecting photography in a big way in 1991, and that led me to artists like Walker Evans and Edward Weston, but Man Ray has always interested me. When this came up for auction in 1993 at Sotheby’s, I really felt that I had to have it – I had no idea that it was going to break the world record for a photograph. When I bought it, I didn’t know whether I’d lost my mind or done something really wonderful. But when I hung it up, I never regretted it for a minute. I never buy anything for investment, I buy things because I like them. I didn’t really know at the time that this would lead me into becoming a really serious collector.

Paul Strand: Wall Street, New York, 1915

The shadows and the composition of this photograph are so beautiful, but when you actually study the image it’s menacing and frightening. It’s like these people are going to work and may never come out. They’re going to be swallowed up by this huge building and that sums up what most people think of Wall Street, even today.

André Kertész: Underwater Swimmer, 1917

In a year’s time this photograph will be 100 years old. I was once asked to choose the most influential photograph of the 20th century. That’s a difficult question, but I chose this one because I think it’s had such an influence on so many photographers and artists. To me, this is the first photograph that made a man’s body sexy. I think it revolutionised how people looked at the male form. I consider this one of the pièces de résistance of my collection. It’s very small; I also have a larger print and I love that too, but this is quite something. There’s a letter from Kertész on the back of the frame, explaining how he took the photograph and what happened. It was taken in 1917 in Hungary and features the artist’s brother. Soon afterwards, Kertész moved to Paris to get better paper for his printing.

Walker Evans: Floyd Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama, 1936

I’m drawn to the Depression, because I’m drawn to things that tell the truth. As a boy I read John Steinbeck and this is the visual Steinbeck – reportage of what was going on in America at that time, and they’re heartbreaking photographs. Floyd Burroughs is a deeply handsome man, with his dungarees on and his gnarled face, and neck protruding kind of sexily from his lovely white shirt. But the eyes tell of sorrow and of not knowing what was going to happen in the next few days or years.

László Moholy-Nagy: View from the Berlin Tower, 1928

This was one of the first photographs I bought. I was on tour, I’d just started collecting photography and I went to this gallery in Zurich, where I saw this. I had no idea what it was until the gallery owner told me that it was a radio tower. It looks like a surrealist abstract painting from that period, but it’s a photograph and I was drawn to it immediately. I knew nothing about Moholy-Nagy and this was the first of his I collected. It’s one of my favourite photographs because it’s such an abstract thing, yet it’s just an everyday view – and that’s what great photographers try to capture.

Jaromír Funke: Photographic Construction, c1923

I was attracted to this straight away. It is a pure example of the way that photography has advanced – it is quite extraordinary. I was never attracted to abstract painting so much, but abstract photography really got me. I think photographers love shadow and light – the lighting is very important – and in this photograph it all came together brilliantly.

Herbert Bayer: Humanly Impossible (Self-Portrait), 1932

When I first saw this image I just thought that I’d love to have it one day. It’s very Salvador Dalí-esque. This print is from 1932, so it was created around the time that Dalí was starting to paint surrealist images of war. If you look at this now you still think, ‘What a piece of genius.’ This is what was so brilliant about that time and era – the experimentation. My mind boggles when I think, how did he do this? Imogen Cunningham: Magnolia Blossom, Tower of Jewels, 1925

Imogen Cunningham took a lot of photographs with flowers and I think she subsequently influenced so many other photographers – such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Irving Penn. What a brilliant thing to do, to take a photograph of something so simple and make it so timeless. All the photographs in the Tate Modern show are timeless: they are relevant to what’s going on now and that’s the genius behind them. This was one of the first photographs I bought and I still have it in my living room in Atlanta. I love it so much. It is a very pure photograph, almost religious in a way. Cunningham was of one of the greatest photographers. The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection is at Tate Modern from November 10 to May 7 (tate.org.uk)