‘A much healthier addiction than buying drugs’: The story of Elton John’s great photography obsession

He swapped cocaine for the flash bulb in 1990, emerging from rehab to start a stellar photography collection (for which he has his own full-time director) that now comprises nearly 10,000 works. As a major new show from his personal archive opens at the V&A, Mark Hudson reveals how the Rocket Man gets his fix from the frame game

Elton John at the exhibition, Taupin and O’Neill: Two Sides of the ’60s at the Iconic Images Gallery, Piccadilly, London, in April 2023 (Richard Young/Shutterstock)

Last October in Stockholm, Elton John performed the final concert in his five-year Farewell Yellow Brick Road world tour, bringing down the curtain on one of the most successful music careers in history. Yet anyone expecting the global superstar and hugely influential activist to sink quietly into the oblivion of retirement is badly mistaken.

On Saturday the Victoria and Albert Museum opens the biggest photography exhibition in its history, Fragile Beauty, drawn entirely from the collection of John and his husband, David Furnish. Comprising 300 works by 41 artists, it not only features some of the most iconic images in the history of the medium, but announces John as one of the most significant collectors of the post-war era.

“Everything [in my collection] has been chosen by me,” John told The Observer in 2016. “My curator will suggest stuff, but nobody goes and collects on my behalf. I’m not known for my restraint, but for me this collection is about love, not collecting for the sake of it or grandstanding.”