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

Modern Instances, The Craft of Photography - Stephen Shore
Photographic Fields - Joël Van Audenhaege
ARTZINES #1, Paris issue
Piano - Joseph Charroy
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 2 - Claire Pedot
Graphzine Visages
Le dos des choses - Guillaume Goutal
La prise - Florian Javet
Oblikvaj 2 - L'amour à la maison - Yannis La Macchia, Ensemble Battida
RÉVÉSZ LÁSZLÓ LÁSZLÓ , Not Secret
Salt Crystal - Fabio Parizzi
Économies silencieuses et audaces approximatives - Guy Chevalier [& coll.]
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 1 - Claire Pedot
Rasclose - Geoffroy Mathieu
Saveurs imprévues et secrètes - Gilbert Lascault
Le Choix du peuple - Nicolas Savary, Tilo Steireif
Strates - Else Bedoux
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h
Le blanc nez - Fouss Daniel
IMPROVISATION N. 190220 - Miki Lowe
Après la révolution – numéro 1
Pureté et impureté de l’art. Michel Journiac et le sida Antoine Idier
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi
Gruppen n°13 - Collectif
Aurore Colbert - Marie Mons
Objets Minces - Collectif
Shanghai Cosmetic - Leslie Moquin
La chasse Galerine - Jéréméy Piningre & Aëla Maï Cabel
Dernier royaume - Quentin Derouet
Heads Together – Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate - David Jacob Kramer
Illusive prosody - Alex Beaurain
Radio-Art - Tetsuo Kogawa
AARC – Alter Architecture Research Collective n° 01
Critique d'art n°56
Atopoz - Collectif
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna
Polyphème (d'après Euripide) - J. & E. LeGlatin
WREK The Algorithm! - Aarnoud Rommens, Olivier Deprez
Ellipse - Ismail Alaoui-Fdili
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
Donne des racines au loup-garou & fais courir l'arbre la nuit - Pauline Barzilaï
Editer l’art – Leszek Brogowski
Sillo n°3 - Le Fauve
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Wayfaring - Patrick Messina, André S. Labarthe
Manifeste d'intérieurs ; penser dans les médias élargis - Javier Fernández Contreras
Goodbye - Hsia-Fei Chang, Sofia Eliza Bouratsis, Medhi Brit, Enrico Lunghi
Rue Englelab, La révolution par les livres - Iran 1979 - 1983 - Hannah Darabi
Les Grands Ensembles - Léo Guy-Denarcy
Le singe et le bijoux - Roxane Lumeret
Recto Versu - Bill Noir
Débris N°2 - Théo Garnier Greuez
Eros negro #2 - Demoniak
Gros Gris n°4 - Duel
Dédale - Laurent Chardon 































