The Black Swan
Johnny Green (2025)
“For the black swan never ever wants to rest, never stops to say goodbye” Bert Jansch, The Black Swan (2006)
The Black Swan is the second photo book by photographer Johnny Green, following on from Transience, (2017), both published through the FL imprint. Designed once again by Fabrice Couillerot (First Third Books, MOONBOY), whose previous works include The Cure - Stills, Punk+, Serge Gainsbourg and Saint Etienne, the book was produced by Swallowtail Print in Norfolk, UK.
Where Transience was loud, expansive and full of primary colours, The Black Swan manages to combine a quiet calm with an underlying unease, reflecting the period in which the photographs were taken: February 2020 to September 2021. When the world was introduced to Coronavirus and ended up with Covid.
Dystopian, yet accepting, there are elements of all three panels of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. A juxtaposition of nothing much happening, yet everything is happening. A throwback to Sundays in the late 70s and early 80s. Everything closed, boredom reigning, ripe for creation. From nothing there has to come something.
Shot in London, mostly in and around Walthamstow, The Black Swan serves as a reminder to those now almost too hard to remember times, when life morphed into something simpler and more primal, with Shaun Keaveny on the radio in the afternoon guiding us through.
The book features 336 photographs across 160 pages, 235mm x 275mm landscape, printed beautifully on Essential Velvet 170gsm paper and limited to a print run of just 100 copies, each signed and numbered.
Photography / Johnny Green
Design / Johnny Green & Fabrice Couillerot
Printing / Swallowtail Print
Publishing / FL
Catalogue Number / FL2
Edition / 100 copies
ISBN / 978-0-9956834-1-9