Elton John Donates Photography Book Collection to Emory University

Elton John made his living in the music business, and it was a very good living at that. He used some of his enormous wealth to collect, his focus being art. Anyone who has ever seen John perform will know he is a flamboyant man. His collection matched his personality.

His wealth enabled John to afford multiple homes, which he filled with the items he collected. One of those was in Atlanta as he wished to have an American residence when he toured the country. He has stopped the touring now so John decided to sell the Atlanta residence and the items inside he collected. His Peachtree Road (site of his Atlanta home) sale was hosted by Christie's. There were eight sales, and when all were done, they had brought in over $20 million. Evidently, there are others who share Elton John's tastes and were willing to pay up for the same art works he liked.

So, that's the end of the story? Not quite. It turns out John didn't sell all of his collection. He donated part of it. One of the items he collected was books. John's specialty was photography books. He earlier said that originally he didn't have a high opinion of photography, disliking being photographed personally. Having it done constantly, he did not think of photography as an art form. However, as the photographing continued, he began to think more deeply about it and his opinion changed. Not one to go at anything half-heartedly, once he began collecting photography, he collected seriously, perhaps obsessively, depending on your choice of words. They were arriving everyday, and when he found one considered a great work by a great photographer, money became no object in his pursuit. With three residences, he filled much of the space in all with photographs, apparently duplicating much of his collection. “I became avaricious about it, like a kid in a candy store,” he says on a tape to accompany an exhibition of his photography collection in London in 2017.

We now learn from a blog post of the Emory University Libraries what happened to John's Atlanta photography books. John gave them to Emory. According to poster Mia McCown, an intern at Emory University's Woodruff Library, Emory received an email from John's curators saying, “Elton suggested the idea of donating to the Emory library so that his books could have an impact after leaving his collection.” According to Ms. McCown, representatives of Emory went to John's penthouse condominium and selected 2,000 items.

McCown described the collection in her post. “Many of the books are limited editions and difficult to acquire. Beyond their rare nature they were also filled with fascinating details. Some books had their own custom clamshell cases, sticky notes left on certain pages, or letters from publishers about Elton John himself. These books are not only collections of photographers’ works, but works of art themselves, with beautiful dust jackets, handmade paper, or hand-sewn bindings.”

She continued, “These books were unique and often a challenge to catalog in one way or another. Many were signed by authors or photographers to Elton John... Many of the books need to be housed on special shelves due to their size, and some are delicate, requiring extra care such as special cases and other forms of protection.”

John may be saying Goodbye Peachtree Road and its penthouse, to return to the plow (figuratively), but in his thirty-plus years of residence, John left an impression on Atlanta. Now, he is leaving it a legacy.