Time stops for nothing—except Fragile Beauty, Victoria and Albert's latest photography exhibition. The over three hundred prints on loan from Sir Elton John and David Furnish's private collections span the 1950s to the present day. Curator Duncan Forbes combines the works of headliners Robert Mapplethorpe and Nan Goldin with fresh acquisitions from Tyler Mitchell and An-My Lê. Many images encapsulate a watershed moment in history, like the Civil Rights Movement, the AIDS crisis, and September 11th, 2001. Others capture intimate moments of personal discovery, such as Chet Baker by Herman Leonard or Simply Fragile by Tyler Mitchell.
We get the sense that Fragile Beauty seeks to capture the entire range of life on earth. Newborn babies are featured alongside Peter Hujar's Candy Darling in her Deathbed. Mapplethorpe's Poppy and Sally Mann's Untitled (Little House) highlight the ephemerality of vitality even in inanimate objects.
Aside from exploring the passage of time, Fragile Beauty treads the tightrope of other tensions. Forbes particularly focuses on the duality of the public and the private, especially in the context of rising celebrity worship. A series of Marilyn Monroe portraits captures the ultra-prominent actress during intimate moments—rehearsing lines or deep in thought. Crying Men by Sam Taylor-Johnson features Hollywood stars Laurence Fishburne, Daniel Craig, and Robin Williams in tears. Nan Goldin captures the extremes of the human experience in Thanksgiving, a 149-image cocktail of grit, exuberance, grief, and sexuality.
Even visual tension is prominent in many images of the exhibit. Tom Bianchi's acrobatic torsos in Fire Island Pines or Herb Ritts' telescoping Versace Dress (Back View) feature physical contortions and inversions that challenge our conception of the human body. Labo I by Zanele Muhol is a stark image of colour contrast in which the woman's bright white lips and eyes are shrouded in a shadowy background.
Peeling back the seemingly infinite layers of Fragile Beauty reveals at once a documentation of the past seventy years and a love letter to the contradictions of life.
