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

Rois de la forêt - Alain Garlan
Pureté et impureté de l’art. Michel Journiac et le sida Antoine Idier
Catalogue Art Guys - That's painting productions, Bernard Brunon
Objets Minces - Collectif
Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
Débris N°2 - Théo Garnier Greuez
Eros negro n°4 - Démoniak
Donne des racines au loup-garou & fais courir l'arbre la nuit - Pauline Barzilaï
Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna
De lave et de fer - Laurent Feynerou
Avec ce qu'il resterait à dire - Anne Maurel
Holyhood, vol. 1 — Guadalupe, California - Alessandro Mercuri
Habitante 2 - Coll.
Lazy Painter - Angela Gjergjaj, Jordi Bucher and Mirco Petrini
Le vieux père - Laurent Kropf
Dada à Zurich – Le mot et l’image (1915-1916)Hugo Ball
Migrant Mother, Migrant Gender - Sally Stein
Comment réparer : La maternité et ses fantômes - Iman Mersal
À partir de n°1 - Coll.
Piano - Joseph Charroy
Le dos des choses - Guillaume Goutal
Regards croisés — Gekreutze Blicke - Yeloyolo
Mökki n°4
Pénurie - Zivo, Jérôme Meizoz
Les soleils qui tournent ont des oreilles - coll.
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h
La troisième oreille et autres textes + CD - Bryan Lewis Saunders
La traversée - Magali Brueder
Ventoline 5 - Coll. 































