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Alexander Rodchenko’s Shukov Tower, 1920.
Alexander Rodchenko’s Shukov Tower, 1920. Photograph: Alexandr Rodchenko/DACS
Alexander Rodchenko’s Shukov Tower, 1920. Photograph: Alexandr Rodchenko/DACS

Elton John's modernist photo collection to be shown at Tate Modern

This article is more than 8 years old

Public will be able to see ‘amazing array’ from Sir Elton’s private collection of photographs by artists such as Man Ray

For 25 years, they have hung on the walls of his houses in London, Beverly Hills and Venice. But a new exhibition will see Sir Elton’s John’s private collection of modernist photographs, one of the largest in the world, put on public display at Tate Modern.

The singer began acquiring photography in 1991 and has a private collection that includes over 2,500 works. The exhibition will display 150 works, taken between 1917 and 1950 by artists such as Man Ray and featuring portraits of Matisse, Picasso and Georgia O’Keeffe, which are some of the most significant modernist photographs in the world.

Herbert Bayer, self-portrait 1932. Photograph: Herbert Bayer/DACS

This collaboration between John and Tate Modern has been two years in the making. Shoair Mavlian, who will curate the show, opening in November, said that the singer had been very enthusiastic about publicly exhibiting such a large portion of his collection.

John described the show as a great honour, and said collecting the photographs had brought him “great joy over the last 25 years”. He added: “Each of these photographs serves as inspiration for me in my life; they line the walls of my homes and I consider them precious gems. We are thrilled to be part of this collaboration with Tate Modern and hope that the exhibition audience experiences as much joy in seeing the works as I have had in finding them.”

Mavlian said the show would explore a turning point in British photography through a selection of works that were rarely brought together in one place. It will be the first time a group of Man Ray portraits will have been exhibited together, having been slowly collected by John over the past two decades.

“Elton’s collection has never been shown like this before,” said Mavlian. “The amazing array of the photos he has collected enables us to create a survey exhibition of modernist photography that hasn’t happened in the UK for a long time. It means we can tell the story of this important moment in photography to a really large audience.”

Sir Elton John on stage in Texas, October 2015. Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

Mavlian said a particularly rare image that will be on show was a tiny 3cm image, taken in 1917 by Hungarian photographer André Kertész, called Underwater Swimmer, which she described as a “tiny gem”.

John regularly lends out his art and photography collection to galleries around the world and in 2007 the Baltic Centre in Newcastle curated a full show around his art collection, which included many of his photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe and Irving Penn. John’s photography collection, which spans from 1900 up to the current day, is still being continuously added to by the singer.

John and his husband David Furnish built an art gallery in 2009, attached to their Berkshire home, to display many works from the vast and priceless collection.

“It’s really important what Elton John has done by bringing all these photographs together,” said Mavlian. “We are now talking about ways that Elton’s works can be shown to the British public on a more permanent basis.”

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