Born out of a reflection on the nature of images and their nocturnal vocation, Better in the Dark than His Rider is both a fable and a survival guide. The collected work by Francesco Merlini spans different years, possibly quite distant from one other; shot in all four continents, his pictures reveal the unique perspective of someone who, like a sleepwalker guided by ghosts, seeks for something nameless. The title is drawn, almost literally, from a 19th century manual of optics. The original sentence – “[…] much better in the dark than his rider” – refers to a horse’s night vision compared to a human’s.
The selected sequence of pictures unravels around the transitional stage between wakefulness and sleep, engaging with hypnagogia as a sensory yet dreamlike mode of semiconscious representation. Images make up mind’s psychic contents. If in dreams self-consciousness is suspended and images look real to the extent that we are sleeping, when dozing we can consciously guide them because partially aware that we are dreaming. Stated otherwise, in lucid dreams we know we are faced with the contents of our imagination, whose edges appear hallucinatory. Dreaming is a perpetual state we do experience both asleep and awake. Thanks to imagination, the dream matter turns into the mind’s real object again.

23,5×31 cm
Hard cover with embossing
Offset UV
80 pages
Paper:
Munken Lynx Rough 150 g/m²
Fedrigoni Sirio Nero 140 g/m²
Wibalin Natural Petal

François Morellet - 5 x 3 - François Morellet, Serge Lemoine, Frédéric Valabrègue
Strates & Archipels - Pierre Merle
Hmm ! - C. de Trogoff
Femme, Arabe et... Cinéaste - Heiny Srour
Blaclywall by Sihab Baik - Claude Closky
Philonimo - Le Papillon de Tchouang-Tseu - Alice Brière-Haquet, Raphaële Enjary
Ludmilla Cerveny - Work
Offrir des fleurs
Konrad Becker - Dictionnaire de réalité stratégique
ARTZINES #1, Paris issue
Carnivore - Grow
Fluent - Laëticia Donval
Bacon le Cannibale - Perrine Le Querrec
Lavalse des tambours - Paul Rey
Acteurs d'un film gravé. Docteur A. Infirmier O. - Annabelle Dupret, Olivier Deprez et Adolpho Avril
Regards croisés — Gekreutze Blicke - Yeloyolo
Lili, la rozell et le marimba / revue n°2
Quels problèmes les artistes éditeurices peuvent-iels résoudre ? - Collectif
Image Canoë - Jérémie Gindre
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna 































