"Fragile Beauty," an exhibition by Elton John the collector

In the early 1990s, Elton John left rehab. He had just lost a lot of friends,the AIDS pandemic was sweeping through the nightlife scene he knew so well—and he was looking for another obsession. It would bephotography. Thirty years later, he and his husband David Furnish own one of the world's largest private collections:more than seven thousand prints. The Jeu de Paume is presentingthree hundred of them, in an exhibition from theVictoria and Albert Museum that caused a sensation in London.

The title is not a stylistic flourish: “Fragile Beauty”. Beneath the guise of a retrospective of names - Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Diane Arbus, Herbert List, Ai Weiwei, Harley Weir, Nan Goldin - it is an autobiography unfolding in five chapters: desire, fashion, celebrities, photojournalism, body. An era that Elton John lived through from the inside, marked by illness, excess, beauty, and loss. Each print captures what neither the era nor the flesh can retain. The highlight is contained within a wall: one hundred and forty-nine prints from Nan Goldin's Thanksgiving series. A friend, friends, a dinner, a life filmed at eye level.

It is here that the collection reveals its true subject. What Elton John has been collecting for thirty years is not a history of photography, it's a way of continuing to inhabit the world of those who are no longer there.

JEU DE PAUME
From June 12 to September 24, 2026
1 Place de la Concorde, 75001- Metro Concorde (Line 1)
Wed. to Sun. 11am-7pm, Tue. until 8pm 9 PM - Closed on Mondays
Price: €14 - Reduced price: €9.50 - Free for under 18s