Elton John’s radical eye

Photographs by Man Ray and Irving Penn are among the modernist masterpieces that the singer has lent to an exhibition at Tate Modern

By Alastair Curtis

Sir Elton John began collecting photographs upon leaving rehab in 1990. Since then he has amassed over 8,000, many of them modernist masterpieces. A good chunk of the collection is now on display at Tate Modern, including watershed works by Man Ray, Andre Kertész and Dorothea Lange, as well as those of lesser known but no less significant photographers like Piv van Os and Josef Breitenbach.

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