Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collection, V&A review – Elegance, mystique and immense power

It’s only eight years since the last major London museum show of photographs from Sir Elton John and David Furnish’s collection. Yet such is the scale of the couple’s holdings and the speed of their collecting they could probably have mounted 10 exhibitions over that period without repeating a single work.

Tate Modern’s focused on Sir Elton’s first photographic love, classic early modernist photography, often severely abstract and almost exclusively in black and white – a taste that might seem surprising in so flamboyant a figure. The far larger takes us into the succeeding era, from the post-war period to date, with the couple’s personal preoccupations explored through iconic images by