Lunchtime Lecture: The Making of Fragile Beauty

Join curators Duncan Forbes and Lydia Caston as they discuss the process of curating Fragile Beauty – the museum’s largest photography exhibition to date. Together, they will share insights into the collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish including iconic images from the worlds of fashion, celebrity, documentary and contemporary photography.

Duncan Forbes is Head of Photography at the V&A. He was previously Director of Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, a Researcher at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, and Senior Curator of Photography at the National Galleries of Scotland. Recent essays have appeared in catalogues for the Reina Sofía Museum, Madrid, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg. His latest book is An Interview with Lewis Baltz (2020)

Lydia Caston is Exhibition Project Curator at the V&A. She was the Assistant Curator of Tim Walker: Wonderful Things (2019–20). Her recent published work includes ‘Yellow’ in The V&A Book of Colour in Design (2020), as well as contributions to Another Country: British Documentary Photography Since 1945 (2022), Calling the Shots: A Queer History of Photography (2024) and George Hoyningen Huene: Photography, Fashion, Film (2024).