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

Der Erste Rotkehlchen - Le livre
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
Trous gris - Michel Vachey
Le blanc nez - Fouss Daniel
Typologie – La tente de camping
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 1 - Claire Pedot
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi
Poétique d'une introspection visuelle - Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis, Alex Barbier
Deep state - Mathieu Desjardins
La traversée - Magali Brueder
La grande surface de réparation - Gilles Pourtier
Le Parfum du Silence - Bonnie Colin
Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander
Good Company - Paul Van der Eerden
本の本の本 - antoine lefebvre editions,
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Bruits - Emmanuel Madec
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac
Konrad Becker - Dictionnaire de réalité stratégique
Un peu comme voir dans la nuit - Leif Elggren + CD
Sans titre - Benjamin Hartmann
Roven n°4
Keywording (Post) Contemporary Art - Greta Rusttt
Oblikvaj 4 - Last minute Shodo - Thomas Perrodin, Ensemble Batida
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Gros Gris n°4 - Duel
MENU メニュー - Wataru Tominaga
16 x 421 - Lorraine Druon
Hobo Nickel - Damien Sauvage
Dans la Lune - Fanette Mellier
Alma Mater n°1
interférence - 3 - maycec
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h 































