Entity Framework Core many-to-many navigation issues

Entity Framework Core has yet to implement many-to-many relationships, as tracked in GitHub issue #1368; however, when I follow the navigation examples in that issue or similar answers here at Stack Overflow, my enumeration fails to yield results.

I have a many-to-many relationship between Photos and Tags.

After implementing the join table, examples show I should be able to:

var tags = photo.PhotoTags.Select(p => p.Tag);

While that yields no results, I am able to to load via:

var tags = _context.Photos
    .Where(p => p.Id == 1)
    .SelectMany(p => p.PhotoTags)
    .Select(j => j.Tag)
    .ToList();

Relevant code:

public class Photo
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<PhotoTag> PhotoTags { get; set; }
}

public class Tag
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<PhotoTag> PhotoTags { get; set; }
}

public class PhotoTag
{
    public int PhotoId { get; set; }
    public Photo Photo { get; set; }

    public int TagId { get; set; }
    public Tag Tag { get; set; }
}

protected override void OnModelCreating(ModelBuilder builder)
{
    base.OnModelCreating(builder);

    builder.Entity<PhotoTag>().HasKey(x => new { x.PhotoId, x.TagId });
}

What am I missing from other examples?