Photography’s greatest hits: why Elton John’s collection is a chart topper

If a picture’s worth 1,000 words, Sir Elton John’s extensive collection of photographs would equate to a 7 million-word anthology — and counting. ‘One year when I totalled what we had acquired, it averaged about 1.5 pieces a week,’ Newell Harbin, the Director of Sir Elton John and David Furnish Photography Collection, tells Christie’s. Totalling more than 7,000 works, it is one of the largest private collections of photography in the world.

When Harbin began assisting John with his collection in 2010, he was already a voracious collector. The award-winning musician and philanthropist had fallen in love with photography in the early 1990s when, newly sober, he saw the medium in a fresh light. Over the years, as John’s understanding of the movements within photography grew, he assembled a world-class collection as diverse as his own talents and passions.

‘Within the photography community, Elton’s love for photographs was an open secret for a while. He collected at the masterpiece level and was behind a lot of great interest and collecting power during the ’90s and the 2000s,’ recalls Darius Himes, Christie’s Deputy Chairman and International Head of Photographs. In 1993, for example, John bought Man Ray’s 1932 image Glass Tears for $193,895, then the highest price for a single photograph at auction.

The public came to know John’s impressive trove of photographs, which charts the rise of the medium from 1910 onwards, through the exhibitions Chorus of Light at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art in 2000 and The Radical Eye at London’s Tate Modern in 2016–17. Beginning 18 May 2024, more than 300 images from John and Furnish’s collection will be unveiled at the Victoria and Albert Museum in Fragile Beauty, the institution’s largest photography exhibition to date.

This February, John’s fans and photography enthusiasts will have the opportunity of a lifetime: to acquire images that hung on the walls of his Atlanta home — and in several instances, at the revered institutions previously mentioned. The Collection of Sir Elton John: Goodbye Peachtree Road brings together hundreds of treasured artworks and objects from the musician’s sprawling residence at Park Place, which was his home away from home on the East Coast for three decades. The collection evinces John’s devotion to photography at the highest level across genres ranging from fashion to photojournalism.

‘It’s amazing what Elton can put on the wall and get away with versus what other people can,’ says Harbin of the diversity of John’s collection, which he hung salon style to maximise space. In addition to his 13,500-square-foot apartment, John also maintained a studio at Park Place where Harbin managed and conserved the photographs, which are especially sensitive to light and humidity. ‘Because of how large our collection is, we have the ability to rotate photographs in the way that they should be rotated to keep the prints to a museum-quality level.’

John is extremely proactive in curating the right mix for his walls and keeping abreast of the market, Harbin notes. ‘If Elton does not know about a photographer, which is rare, he wants to know everything about that artist: what books they’ve published, what exhibitions they’ve been in and so on,’ says Harbin, adding that even after 14 years, ‘he keeps me on my toes at all times.’ Even as his taste expands and evolves, one thing remains constant: ‘he is the most decisive collector I’ve ever known,’ says Harbin. ‘He can tell you within the first five seconds if he likes a piece or not.’

Another constant: John’s appreciation for iconic fashion photography. His collection is rooted in timeless classics by Irving Penn, Horst P. Horst, Richard Avedon, and Herb Ritts, all of whom he has collected in depth. ‘There is not a series by Penn that we do not have in this collection,’ says Harbin of the American titan whose oeuvre also included still lifes and ethnographic images.

A star lot of the collection is Avedon’s Dovima with Elephants, 1955, a variant on what is perhaps his most celebrated photograph of all time. Both appeared in Harper’s Bazaar together. In its original mounting, with red crayon annotations seen around the perimeter, this printer’s proof depicts the supermodel Dovima playfully posing in a different Dior dress than the widely known version.

And while John frequently rotated the works hanging in his home, Harbin singles out two William Kleins nearly always on display: Hat + 5 Roses, + Barbara, Paris, 1956 and Smoke + Veil, Paris, 1958. ‘I can’t look at this pair without thinking of Park Place,’ says Harbin. The two portraits hung in John’s formal living room across from his piano. Another fixture, which hung in his gallery, was Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Elizabeth I, 1999 and Richard I, 1999, part of the Japanese photographer’s seminal portrait series of dramatically lit wax figures.

Celebrity portraits form another through line of the collection. ‘Elton and David are two men who constantly are having their photograph taken, and I think that they pay so much respect towards other musicians, actors, directors or artists having their portrait taken to be shared with others,’ says Harbin. A music and film buff and an avid reader, John is especially drawn to images of the artists Salvador Dalí and David Hockney, the composer Igor Stravinsky, the jazz legend Chet Baker, and the writer Truman Capote, according to Harbin.

Other highlights of the collection range from early modernist and avant-garde works by Man Ray, Paul Outerbridge and André Kertész to bold, sexually charged images à la Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton and Bruce Weber. ‘Elton’s overarching attraction within photography is to artists that portray the entire emotional bandwidth of the human condition,’ says Himes.

In addition to image makers who pushed the medium technically and conceptually, John’s collection features important documentarians of social history, such as Dorothea Lange, Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus. ‘There’s a real humanist, empathetic aspect to the social documentarian work,’ says Himes. For example, the American sociologist Lewis Hine’s harrowing photographs of children workers during the 1910s were instrumental in establishing the first child labour laws in the United States.

John’s collection spans wartime, the Civil Rights era, AIDS activist protests during 1980s, and even recent political rallies in the U.S. ‘We’re trying to stay as contemporary in photojournalism as possible,’ says Harbin.

One of the most important photographs being offered at Christie’s is Robert Frank’s Charleston, South Carolina, 1955 from The Americans. ‘The most influential photo book of the 20th century’ according to Himes, the momentous series shined a light on the ‘dark underbelly of class and racial prejudice.’

The New York downtown scene and also contemporary photography represent two major areas of the collection and ones where Harbin has greatly contributed. ‘When I came to the collection I was absolutely floored with the amount of works by Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin, some of the most important photographers of the 1980s,’ says the director. ‘I realised there were a few key members of that group that were missing, most importantly Peter Hujar.’ Along with photographs by Hujar, Harbin recommended works by Mark Morrisroe.

In addition to images by Richard Misrach, Cindy Sherman, Andreas Gursky and Wolfgang Tillmans, Harbin calls Hockney’s Prehistoric Museum near Palm Springs, California, Sept. 1982 ‘incredibly special’: ‘I’ve never seen a collage by Hockney in such wonderful condition.’ As far as other photographers working today, Harbin says ‘no one is off limits.’

‘The same amount of energy, love and respect goes into a contemporary artist who is selling a piece for $1,800 as an established contemporary artist who’s selling a piece for $180,000,’ she says. ‘Regardless of the artist’s gallery or status within the art world, if that piece speaks to Elton and David, then it will find its way into the collection.’

As for the photographs John will never part with, Harbin points to Kertész’s Underwater Swimmer, a vintage print of which hung above his desk for years, and remains in the collection. A later print of this work will be offered in the upcoming Christie’s sale.

Prior exhibitions at the Tate Modern and the High Museum have ‘been a real treat for people,’ says Himes, ‘giving them a window into Elton’s distinctive collection over the years.’ Dovetailing with the upcoming V&A show, he says the Christie’s sale series will ‘provide a unique chance for people to participate in collecting photography in the same special way that Elton has.’