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

Le blanc nez - Fouss Daniel
Il était deux fois - Gary Colin
It was a good day - Jeremy Le Corvaisier
Eros Negro # 1 - Demoniak
Flynn zine # 1 - Flynn Maria Bergmann
Strates & Archipels - Pierre Merle
Holy etc. - Fabienne Radi
The Book Fight - Chihoi
In the presence of being absent... Arrgh. - Stéphanie Leinhos
Aurore Colbert - Marie Mons
Le dos des choses - Guillaume Goutal
Entretiens – Jérôme Dupeyrat
L'internationale modique (AND 3) - J-M. Bertoyas
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 3 - Claire Pedot
ADBC du Dessin - Jacques Floret
Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander
Le Dépli - Loïc Largier
Mökki n°4
Prose postérieure - Les commissaires anonymes
Sillo n°3 - Le Fauve
SKKS - Gilles Pourtier
Ludmilla Cerveny - Work
De lave et de fer - Laurent Feynerou
Expériences pédagogiques Workshop La Plata 01. - Collectif - Zeug
Dessins pour Rugir - Virginie Rochetti
Bruits - Emmanuel Madec
Talweg 6 - La distance
Architecture-Belvédère - Lou-Andréa Lassalle & Bérénice Béguerie
Les glaciers - Lorraine Druon
Mökki n°2
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
Aristide n°4
Critique & création - L.L. de Mars
Offrir des fleurs
Four Worlds - Hannah Waldron
Musée des Beaux-Arts - Pierre Martel
Deep state - Mathieu Desjardins
Holyhood, vol. 1 — Guadalupe, California - Alessandro Mercuri
Konrad Becker - Dictionnaire de réalité stratégique
RÉVÉSZ LÁSZLÓ LÁSZLÓ , Not Secret
Rue Englelab, La révolution par les livres - Iran 1979 - 1983 - Hannah Darabi
Illusive prosody - Alex Beaurain
Optical Sound 3
interférence - 2 - maycec
Dernier royaume - Quentin Derouet
La tour Tatline - Georgi Stanishev
Génération dakou - Yann Jun + CD
Eurob0ys Crysis - Massimiliano Bomba, Leon Sadler, Yannick Val Gesto
Acteurs d'un film gravé. Docteur A. Infirmier O. - Annabelle Dupret, Olivier Deprez et Adolpho Avril
Hobo Nickel - Damien Sauvage
Editer l’art – Leszek Brogowski
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h 































