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

Christina Forrer - Don’t Swallow Your Tongue
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Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander
Piano - Joseph Charroy
Piotr - Pierre Escot, Denis Lavant
SKKS - Gilles Pourtier
Tanière de lune - Maria-Mercé Marçal
Eros negro #2 - Demoniak
Le vieux père - Laurent Kropf
AARC – Alter Architecture Research Collective n° 01
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
Le voyeur - entretiens - Éric Rondepierre - Julien Milly
Comic Book (Untitled) - Stéphanie Leinhos
Dear Paul - Paul Van der Eerden
Optical Sound 2
Bacon le Cannibale - Perrine Le Querrec
Artzines # 10 - Show & Tell #2 NY Special
How to Become the Daughters of Darkness - Coll.
Inframince et hyperlié - Philippe Lipcare
Norovirus - Orgie en mers chaudes - Claude Grétillat
Entretiens – Jérôme Dupeyrat
Hmm ! - C. de Trogoff
In The Navy - Julien Kedryna
Temps d'arrêt - Etienne Buyse
La Typographie post-binaire au delà de l'écriture inclusive - Camille Circlude
Génération dakou - Yann Jun + CD
Promenade au pays de l'écriture - Armando Petrucci
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi
Lavalse des tambours - Paul Rey
Le lacéré anonyme - Jacques Villeglé
Optical Sound 3
La traversée - Magali Brueder
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Barrage de Sarrans - Sandrine Marc
Roven n°4
Gros Gris n°4 - Duel
Salt Crystal - Fabio Parizzi
America - Ayline Olukman, Hélène Gaudy
Papier magazine n°06 - Coupe du monde
CURIOSITY — David Lynch
Carnivore - Grow
Ar(t)chitectures situées - Étienne Delprat
Citrus maxima xparadisi - coll.
Assembly - Sam Porritt
Le Choix du peuple - Nicolas Savary, Tilo Steireif
Économies silencieuses et audaces approximatives - Guy Chevalier [& coll.]
Recto Versu - Bill Noir
Keywording (Post) Contemporary Art - Greta Rusttt
Image Canoë - Jérémie Gindre
IBM – Graphic Design Guide from 1969 to 1987
Pour une esthétique de l'émancipation - Isabelle Alfonsi
Email Diamant - Fabienne Radi
Le Gabion - Théo Robine-Langlois
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 2 - Claire Pedot
Copy This Book - Eric Schrijver
Modern Instances, The Craft of Photography - Stephen Shore
Dédale - Laurent Chardon
Party Studies – Vol. 1 – Home gatherings, flat events, festive pedagogy and refiguring the hangover 































