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

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Talweg 6 - La distance
MegaOctet Verbateam
Assembly - Sam Porritt
Une goutte d'homme - Alice Dourlen
Savoir Revivre - Jacques Massacrier
Laura Mulvay - Fetichisme et curiosité
Rasclose - Geoffroy Mathieu
Sans titre - Chris Kiss
Dédale - Laurent Chardon
Feminist Art Activisms and Artivisms - Katy Deepwell (ed.)
From red to red - Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Patrick Javault
Humoral Fortuities - Francesco Albano’s
Ventoline 5 - Coll.
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
La chasse Galerine - Jéréméy Piningre & Aëla Maï Cabel
Temps d'arrêt - Etienne Buyse
How to Become the Daughters of Darkness - Coll.
Heads Together – Weed and the Underground Press Syndicate - David Jacob Kramer
Débris N°2 - Théo Garnier Greuez
ICCMHW - Atelier Choque Le Goff
Télégraphes de l'Utopie – L'art des avant-gardes en Europe Centrale 1918-1939 - Sonia de Puineuf
WREK The Algorithm! - Aarnoud Rommens, Olivier Deprez
Lazy Painter - Angela Gjergjaj, Jordi Bucher and Mirco Petrini
Soleil, eau, vent : vers l'autonomie énergétique - Delphine Bauer
Papier magazine n°06 - Coupe du monde
Graphzine Visages
Good Company - Paul Van der Eerden
Entretiens – Jérôme Dupeyrat
Sillo n°3 - Le Fauve
Le dos des choses - Guillaume Goutal
Le blanc nez - Fouss Daniel
Retour d'y voir - n° 1 & 2 - Mamco
C'est les vacances n°2 - coll. dir. Eugénie Zely
Critique & création - L.L. de Mars
Les voiles de Sainte-Marthe - Christian Rosset
Pas vu Pas pris - Collectif, Olivier Deloignon, Guillaume Dégé
Acteurs d'un film gravé. Docteur A. Infirmier O. - Annabelle Dupret, Olivier Deprez et Adolpho Avril
America - Ayline Olukman, Hélène Gaudy
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
In the presence of being absent... Arrgh. - Stéphanie Leinhos
Optical Sound 3
Bruits - Emmanuel Madec
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 2 - Claire Pedot
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 1 - Claire Pedot
Tomber dans l'escalier - Jasper Sebastian Stürup
Fluent - Laëticia Donval 































