The Rocket Man’s photos make for a wild ride

Fragile Beauty

V&A, London SW7 ★★★★★

What do you give someone who has everything? If that person is Elton John, the answer’s simple: a rare photograph. A new exhibition at the V&A showcasing “aspects” of this photography fan’s collection of more than 7,000 prints includes a group of self-portraits in which the American Peter Hujar hops and skips, naked, around a studio. Elton received them from his husband, David Furnish, for his 70th birthday. Who says your twilight years can’t be frisky?

The pair have been collecting photography since the 1990s, after pop’s “Rocket Man” went sober. In 2016, Tate Modern presented their modernist holdings. Fragile Beauty is a sort of sequel, by turns glitzy and sobering, examining the medium’s evolution after 1950.

It begins with the couple’s latest acquisition: Richard Avedon’s brilliant black-and-white shot of a pale part-time beekeeper as bald as Buddha, partially covered with buzzing workers and drones. This establishes two themes: an interest, often explicitly homoerotic, in the male body as a subject; and a preoccupation with vulnerability and physical and emotional pain.

Yet, for all the talk of “fragile beauty” as the “filament” binding everything together, this behemoth of an exhibition – with more than 300 prints on display – proves bewilderingly various. What else can we make of a show that encompasses a portrait by Norman Parkinson of Miss Piggy and Richard Drew’s Falling Man, taken at 9.41am on Sept 11 2001? (John describes the latter as “one of the most beautiful images that I’ve got”.) As I passed through the show’s nine sections – including “Fashion”, “Desire” and “Reportage”, as well as a room of “Stars” (Bob Dylan, the Fab Four, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin) – I felt like a pinball whooshed around a gigantic arcade game.

For all that, Fragile Beauty is worth visiting. Considered individually, these prints are often spellbinding. Six shots by former wunderkind Ryan McGinley – a superstar of US art circa 2003 – are still invigorating. Harley Weir’s 2015 photographs of Senegalese youths are superbly chic.

Sometimes, things even get surprisingly cerebral. “Towards Abstraction” presents comparatively demanding yet scintillating images by, among others, Richard Caldicott, Thomas Ruff and Wolfgang Tillmans. It’s a world away from the earlier celebrity-worship, candyfloss silliness and soft porn.

From Sat; vam.ac.uk

One for the album: Elton John: Egg on His Face (1999) by David LaChapelle