The male form is everywhere in museums. A naked man is never shocking when he’s presented in white marble, staring back at you with empty white eyes. The winged phallus of Pompeii warrants a giggle, but it doesn’t feel out of place. But at the newly opened Fragile Beauty exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London’s South Kensington, I feel like I’ve never had the experience of being so surrounded by images of naked men before. At least, not in a mainstream museum. They stand out because of the medium – photography.
“It was hugely important to have a section dedicated to male desire,” says Lydia Caston, one of the exhibition’s co-curators. “Even though we see male nudes across museums and sculpture, sometimes in painting, when it’s photography, it’s always a bit more of a concern because it’s almost too real. We wanted to do it in a bold way. The room is painted a bright red colour called Cranberry Crunch.”
It’s a red which evokes velvet, voluptuousness, sex – the place behind the curtain.
Homoeroticism would be impossible to ignore in an exhibition co-created by one of the most famous gay couples in history. Supported by Gucci, Fragile Beauty is a collaboration between the V&A and Elton John and David Furnish. Elton and David allowed the museum to select highlights from their 7,000 piece photography collection, creating an exhibition comprised of some of the most famous photos in history, from the 50s onwards. Many you will have seen before, but for a hall of fame, it feels surprisingly intimate and sensitive.
“Our challenge was to translate a really private and personal collection, works that they live with, into something for the public. The V&A has a very broad audience, so it was a really exciting challenge to showcase things that we might not include within our permanent galleries.”
With themes ranging from fashion and showbiz to photojournalism and the illusion of America, the collection is indeed diverse. In very few places would you find a glamour shot of Miss Piggy in the same exhibition as Richard Drew’s famous ‘The Falling Man’ photograph from September 11th.
“Early on Elton said to us that it should be mischievous, it should be playful. But also the collection is pretty serious with some of the photojournalism work.
“It’s a human story through the collection. [Elton and David] have collected them because they have a relation to them.”
One of the highlights of the exhibition is an ode to Nan Goldin’s Thanksgiving series, faithfully represented in a white cube in the middle of the room. “In the book interview from the exhibition, Elton says that when he first saw that space in 1999, he and David immediately understood the shared vulnerability and joy within it and really felt like it was something that they could relate to. Like it was his life on a wall.”
Queer highlights from the collection are plentiful. In one photo by Peter Hujar, Divine looks down at the camera sardonically, coquettishly, in a way that only a drag queen could. There are photos of “Transvestites” by Diane Arbus. Ryan McGinley captures sex, watched on by a wall of photographs. Robert Mapplethorpe’s self-portrait blurs like smoke. References to the HIV/AIDS epidemic weave through every room, a reminder of a generation whose stories might have been lost without this kind of living documentation.
This is an exhibition which breathes. It brings the human experience – particularly that of LGBTQIA+ people – to life, through a sprawling series of rooms (and rooms within rooms). The queer identity is peeled back through every layer, the maze-like layout only adding to this dizzying experience. It shows the place between extreme joy and extreme sadness, a place queer people will instantly recognise.
It’s unsurprising that the exhibition feels like a mirror of Elton’s own life – a temple to fashion, masking, makeup, relationships, drug abuse, sex – a supercut of the greatest hits. It’s exposing, but what better for a collection of photography?
Fragile Beauty is on at the V&A London until January 5th 2025. Book tickets here.
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