For nearly 30 years, Elton John has kept hidden a significant part of his much-publicized life — until now.
“The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography From the Sir Elton John Collection” is the first-ever loan exhibition at a new extension to London’s Tate Modern and showcases nearly 200 black-and-white prints from the 69-year-old pianists’ massive private collection.
Although the exhibition was several years in the making, the project was first revealed last spring.
“Nothing of this caliber and with this type of print has been seen in the U.K.,” Newell Harbin, director of The Sir Elton John Collection, explained. “The prints are so important. We chose all vintage prints between 1915 and 1950 and were very strict on our dates.”
In fact, both Harbin and John were pained to strictly enforce the time frame restriction and found the whittling down of the singer’s nearly 8,000-piece collection the most challenging part of the process.
Harbin was coy about revealing the show’s omitted pieces by name and hesitantly intimated that “one was a self-portrait by Wee-Gee” dating from the early Fifties.
For the past five years, Harbin — formerly with MoMA in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago — worked alongside Tate Modern curators Simon Baker and Shoair Mavlian to fill five
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