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
Dada à Zurich – Le mot et l’image (1915-1916)Hugo Ball
Flower finds - Orianne Jeanselme
Der Erste Rotkehlchen - Le livre
Inframince et hyperlié - Philippe Lipcare
Critique & création - L.L. de Mars
Crise de foie - Christine Demias
Good Company - Paul Van der Eerden
Aristide n°4
Le blanc nez - Fouss Daniel
Tupera Tupera Postcard Book
Goodbye - Hsia-Fei Chang, Sofia Eliza Bouratsis, Medhi Brit, Enrico Lunghi
People in a faraday cage - Stéphanie Gygax
Ellipse - Ismail Alaoui-Fdili
Eurob0ys Crysis - Massimiliano Bomba, Leon Sadler, Yannick Val Gesto
SKKS - Gilles Pourtier
Fluent - Laëticia Donval
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 3 - Claire Pedot
interférence - 2 - maycec
Norovirus - Orgie en mers chaudes - Claude Grétillat
Temps d'arrêt - Etienne Buyse
Burning Images, A History of Effigy Protests - Florian Göttke
Saveurs imprévues et secrètes - Gilbert Lascault
Plus c'est facile, plus c'est beau : prolégomènes à la plus belle exposition du monde - Éric Watier
Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
Bacon le Cannibale - Perrine Le Querrec
Black Case Volume I and II: Return From Exile - Joseph Jarman
Bodies in Scattered Light - Andriu Deplazes
Donne des racines au loup-garou & fais courir l'arbre la nuit - Pauline Barzilaï
Image Canoë - Jérémie Gindre
movement in squares - Stefanie Leinhos
Cyclone - Juliette Chalaye
Collection - Adélaïde Gaudéchoux
Collective Design : Alison & Peter Smithson
Lili, la rozell et le marimba / revue n°2
Email Diamant - Fabienne Radi
moj’am al arabeia - Farah Khelil & antoine lefebvre editions
L'inventaire des destructions - Éric Watier
Tchat - Gary Colin
Ventoline 5 - Coll.
Un cheval, des silex - Benoît Maire, Sally Bonn
Les voiles de Sainte-Marthe - Christian Rosset
Dark optics - David Claerbout
Dernier royaume - Quentin Derouet
Laura Mulvay - Fetichisme et curiosité
Talweg 6 - La distance
Sans titre - Benjamin Hartmann
Guten Tag - Pablo Tomek
Barrage de Sarrans - Sandrine Marc
La traversée - Magali Brueder
Comment réparer : La maternité et ses fantômes - Iman Mersal
Les Mains sales - Collectif
Prose postérieure - Les commissaires anonymes
Optical Sound 3
La France de tête #04
Les Grands Ensembles - Léo Guy-Denarcy
Wayfaring - Patrick Messina, André S. Labarthe 































