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

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

Transience

Johnny Green (2017)

“It made our country small again and made the rest of the world far remote. It robbed us of very much that we had loved, and showed us how ephemeral were many things that we had regarded as changeless.”

Sigmund Freud, On Transience

Transience is the first photo book by photographer Johnny Green.

Designed with the help of First Third Books Fabrice Couillerot and printed by Balto Print, Transience is a work caught staring at the clock, where time equals Plato’s “moving image of eternity”.

The book, self-published on Green's own FL label in spring 2017, is an elegant 150 page hardback, limited to 500 copies and priced at £25 + p&p (£5 UK, £10 Europe, £15 Worldwide). It's available directly from this website with any major credit or debit card, PayPal or by emailing:

transience@johnnyintheechocafe.co.uk

Memory, life, love and death already loomed large within the work as the first part of this project, a 42 minute film, was completed with producer Fabiola Simonetti in June 2015, before a near tragic turn of events arose hours later, with life saving surgery arriving only just in time.

“Months were lost and songs rang out in A&E, having strayed too close to the edge and for a short time at least, I realised what it is to truly live: what we have is here and now, nothing more, nothing less. There is time, but only so much. Transience is true, while forever, in a glimpse was lost.” Johnny Green

Transience follows on from Green's Don't You Want to be Free?, It has often been my dream, Heart & Soul, God knows how I adore life and Those eyes are enough to take this heart of mine, all of which have been exhibited or screened in London over the past decade, as well as shows in Colombia and Taiwan.

“You can look at the stars / look at the ocean / the answer's somewhere / here's what I reckon / close your eyes / kiss the future / junk the morgue” Saint Etienne, Junk the Morgue