The Must-See Photo Show

Interview, Nov, 2000 by Ingrid Sischy

ELTON JOHN'S COLLECTION OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHY MAY BE THE GREATEST IN THE WORLD

Elton John has always been a collector. As a child, he gathered the pictures of birds that came in tea boxes, as well as religious seals from Sunday school. Records came later, followed by Aston-Martins and Bentleys, Chiparus figures, Preiss and Lorenzl bronzes, Art Nouveau posters and prints, and Galle and Tiffany lamps. He collected so much, in fact, that "you couldn't move in my house.... Then I got extremely tired of it all, and I sold practically everything [except the cars] in 1989 at Sotheby's. A year later, I went into treatment [in Atlanta], and I emerged with my eyes open. It was like learning to see again."

Since that time, Elton's passion has been photography. He has amassed what is perhaps the world's finest collection of twentieth-century photographs. Approximately five hundred of them will be exhibited in "Chorus of Light: Photographs from the Sir Elton John Collection" at Atlanta's High Museum of Art from November 4, 2000 through January 28, 2001. Recently, Ingrid Sischy talked with him in his Atlanta apartment for the show's catalog, from which the following excerpt and photographs are taken.

INGRID SISCHY: Photography doesn't speak to everyone. So what does it have that makes you love it so? Is it the stories that are buried in pictures?

ELTON JOHN: Right.

IS: Then there's this communication with people and other artists over time that I think is also an aspect of photography. When we walk around the apartment here. say, and see all these big color flower pictures by Robert Mapplethorpe, we can feel connected to him, right?

EJ: Yes. And we think about his life, and where he was going before it ended. He had such a strong formal side. The composition of photographs is very important to me. I'm interested in the ways in which photographers had the vision to see what is a great photograph. It's like someone who writes a great piece of music. Looking at great photographs is to me equally as stunning as somebody who writes a really good song. It's fantastic. Let's take Kertsz's photograph Underwater Swimmer [page 84]. That photograph could have been taken yesterday--but it wasn't. It was taken in 1917. I think that people who don't catch on to photography haven't really considered it as an art form. Slowly but surely, people are beginning to collect photography, even in England, which is the bastion of hating modern art and hating anything inventive. You can buy a great photograph for $500, a really beautiful photograph. And for people who can't afford to pay millions and millions, that's fantastic.

IS: I'm interested in the analogy you made between photography and music.

EJ: I think there's a great correlation between the two. In both, there can be something for everyone....

IS: When you feel strongly about someone's work, you seem to want to get the whole body of work.

EJ: That's true. I have a lot of Mapplethorpe, Penn, and Horst. Collecting their work is very important to me because I really feel an affiliation with all three. They're three great American photographers.

IS: It feels as though you want to have everything they did, basically.

EJ: Yes. Because through Mapplethorpe's photographs I learned to love him. I didn't even meet him. He was scheduled to photograph me two weeks before he died, and was too weak to do it. But looking at his photographs, God, I wish I could have met him. We would have had a lot of fun. And I feel close to the work of Horst, too, and Irving Penn and Norman Parkinson, for that matter. Penn and Parkinson had such great love affairs with their wives. The way they photographed their partners--you can see the adoration in those photographs. Even though both wives were spectacularly good-looking, the way they were shot by their spouses is so incredible that you can feel the bond between the two of them more than simply being aware of their beauty. Their wives were pivotal in their careers....

IS: This leads to the subject of sexuality and what you've learned about sexuality through photography.

EJ: Yes?

IS: Your collection includes an enormous number of male nudes. So many, in fact, that they alone could make up an important collection of photographs. If you just had these, without any other images, you'd already have something to talk about. Some of these nudes have a homoerotic tone, some don't. I've always thought it was interesting how you've gone for this subject with what seems to be such a visual thirst. I mean here you are, not just an openly gay man, but also a person who's been an active warrior in the gay rights fight--this part of your collection seems to tie in with that. Do you think you're attracted to the nudes of von Gloeden, Platt Lynes, or Horst, say, not just because of their beauty, but also because you feel connected to the photographers themselves, to their histories as gay men?

EJ: Absolutely. I like being a gay man. I think I really enjoy my life. I enjoy what I feel. I enjoy my sexuality. I like to go back in time and see those von Gloeden photographs. David [Furnish, John's partner] bought me my first von Gloeden for Christmas two years ago. It is such a beautiful photograph, and very brave. How brave it was to take those photographs when he did!