The Jeu de Paume presents Fragile beauté – Photographs from the Collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish.
Sir Elton John began collecting photography in 1991. Today, this private collection, assembled together with David Furnish, is considered one of the most important in the world. Celebrated for its exceptional quality, as well as the remarkable breadth and depth of its holdings, it spans the 20th and 21st centuries and brings together more than 7,000 prints, including many works of decisive importance in the history of photography.
Produced by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the exhibition brings together more than 300 prints made from the 1950s to the present day and highlights the work of more than 90 international photographers. The Paris stop at the Jeu de Paume offers a selection of works that trace the history of the modern and contemporary photography, including images by Robert Mapplethorpe, Herb Ritts, Nan Goldin, Diane Arbus, William Klein, Ryan McGinley, Ai Weiwei, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon.
Marking more than thirty years of collecting, Fragile beauté celebrates the passion of Sir Elton John and David Furnish for this medium and reflects their personal taste and their singular eye as collectors. Through five thematic sections, the exhibition explores subjects such as desire, celebrity, fashion, reportage and the assertion of identities.
« Just as when writing a song, there is, when taking a photograph, an element of luck and chance – something happens at the right moment and you have to have the intelligence to press the shutter. » – Sir Elton John (Extract from the exhibition catalogue, «Fragile beauté» co-edition Jeu de Paume / 5 Continents Editions, 2026)
The first area to captivate Sir Elton John when he began his collection, and a long-standing passion of David Furnish, fashion constitutes one of the major themes of the exhibition. It unfolds through iconic works, including fashion photographs by Herb Ritts, Horst P. Horst and Irving Penn — the latter being the first photographer whose work Sir Elton John and David Furnish set out to collect in depth.
The exhibition also offers a selection of portraits devoted to the great figures of music and cinema over the last seventy years. From screen stars to musicians, by way of celebrated visual artists, these international icons have long fuelled the imagination and admiration of Sir Elton John and David Furnish.
Among them, portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Doris Day, Elvis Presley, Miles Davis and Chet Baker illustrate the couple’s fascination with artists whose destiny and work have marked contemporary cultural history.
The exhibition also highlights the couple’s interest in the question of desire, particularly through the representation of the male body. This section devoted to desire also includes iconic bodies of work on gay liberation, among them Sunil Gupta’s Christopher Street series and William Klein’s images documenting Act Up activism. Devoted to queer artists or those who identify as such, Sir Elton John and David Furnish have assembled a significant corpus of works by George Platt Lynes, Peter Hujar, Wolfgang Tillmans and Ryan McGinley.
This commitment to plural perspectives and identities is one of the defining axes of their collection.
The «Fragile beauté» section celebrates the work of Nan Goldin and Robert Mapplethorpe, two heroic figures in the eyes of Sir Elton John and David Furnish. Presented as a true altar to non-conformity, Nan Goldin’s Thanksgiving, composed of 149 Cibachrome prints designed to be hung together from floor to ceiling, forms its heart. Made between 1973 and 1999, this work offers an intimate immersion in the artist’s life in Boston and New York, alongside her friends and lovers — many of whom have since passed away — in a narrative of rare intensity.
Other photographs in this section speak at once of human vulnerability and the creativity of transgression, such as the work of Philip-Lorca diCorcia, who portrays young sex workers in the rough neighbourhoods of Los Angeles in the early 1990s in Hustlers, one of Elton John’s favourite series.
The exhibition is largely driven by artists who have fought against sexual oppression, racism and other forms of persecution, articulating complex and affirmed identities through photography.
The themes of struggle and liberation continue into the «Reportage» section, where iconic images of key moments in contemporary history are presented, notably the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the attacks of 11 September 2001. The passion of Sir Elton John and David Furnish for photojournalism remains intact today.
They continue to collect press photographs; certain works acquired since the Victoria & Albert Museum exhibition will be presented for the first time at the Jeu de Paume.
«Fragile beauté is a palimpsest of possibilities, inviting the public to find their own path and the images that move them most. The collection is sometimes surprising, playful and — as Elton John reminded us during the preparation of the exhibition — full of mischief. It is also terribly serious. We have much to learn from the photographic collection of Elton John and David Furnish.» – Duncan Forbes, Head of Photography, V&A
Curated by the Victoria and Albert Museum in collaboration with the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection.
Fragile beauté – Photographies de la collection de Sir Elton John et David Furnish
12 June – 27 September 2026
Jeu de Paume
1, place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tuileries
Paris 1er • Mo Concorde (lines 1, 8, 12)
+33 (0) 1 47 03 12 50
www.jeudepaume.org
