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

Les voiles de Sainte-Marthe - Christian Rosset
Aurore Colbert - Marie Mons
Lucky Me - Eva Rotreklová & Jules Janssen
Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac
Norovirus - Orgie en mers chaudes - Claude Grétillat
Le Choix du peuple - Nicolas Savary, Tilo Steireif
Un peu comme voir dans la nuit - Leif Elggren + CD
Un cahier - Michel Quarez
Le singe et le bijoux - Roxane Lumeret
Débris #3 - Tout e(s)t n'importe quoi !
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 3 - Claire Pedot
La traversée - Magali Brueder
Grilles - Zelda Mauger
Sans titre - Chris Kiss
Sans titre - Benjamin Hartmann
Paysageur n°3 - Mobiles
À partir de n°1 - Coll.
WREK The Algorithm! - Aarnoud Rommens, Olivier Deprez - FR
Hérésie Étiologique - coll.
Cuadernos - Henry Deletra
Le 6b Saint-Denis, dans un tiers-lieu culturel
Good Company - Paul Van der Eerden
Optical Sound 2
Inframince et hyperlié - Philippe Lipcare
Dessins pour Rugir - Virginie Rochetti
Eros negro n°4 - Démoniak
Polyphème (d'après Euripide) - J. & E. LeGlatin
Wayfaring - Patrick Messina, André S. Labarthe
Acteurs d'un film gravé. Docteur A. Infirmier O. - Annabelle Dupret, Olivier Deprez et Adolpho Avril
Titanic Orchestra - Julien Mauve
Cruiser l'utopie – L'après et ailleurs de l'advenir queer - José Esteban Muñoz
La Typographie post-binaire au delà de l'écriture inclusive - Camille Circlude
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
Modern Instances, The Craft of Photography - Stephen Shore
CURIOSITY — David Lynch
Photographic Fields - Joël Van Audenhaege
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna
Le dos des choses - Guillaume Goutal
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h 































