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

Grilles - Zelda Mauger
Optical Sound 2
Talweg 6 - La distance
Dear Paul - Paul Van der Eerden
Gros Gris n°4 - Duel
Jérôme LeGlatin (avec Mel Crawford) - Le Crash
Le corps travesti - Michel Journiac
Wayfaring - Patrick Messina, André S. Labarthe
Lisa Zordan . one-shot the end
Oblikvaj 5 - Vingt-deux plongées profondes - Aude Barrio, Ensemble Batida
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
Oblikvaj 2 - L'amour à la maison - Yannis La Macchia, Ensemble Battida
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi
À partir de n°1 - Coll.
Pectus Excavatum - Quentin Yvelin
Gruppen n°14 - Collectif
Gnose & Gnose & Gnose - Aymeric Vergnon-d'Alençon
Strates & Archipels - Pierre Merle
Aurore Colbert - Marie Mons
Vases Communicants - Hélène Drénou
L'internationale modique (AND 3) - J-M. Bertoyas
Aristide n°4
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h
Bisou Magique - Coll.
Parataxes + CD - Michael Gendreau
Délié - Baptiste Oberson
Un peu comme voir dans la nuit - Leif Elggren + CD
Machiavel chez les babouins - Tim Ingold
La prise - Florian Javet
Temps d'arrêt - Etienne Buyse
Le dos des choses - Guillaume Goutal
Mourn Baby Mourn - Katerina Andreou
Pénurie - Zivo, Jérôme Meizoz
Zoom Age - Julien Auregan
Papier magazine n°06 - Coupe du monde
La traversée - Magali Brueder
America - Ayline Olukman, Hélène Gaudy
Oasis - Stéphane Ruchaud, Christophe Honoré
Optical Sound 3
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Illusive prosody - Alex Beaurain
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 3 - Claire Pedot
Piano - Joseph Charroy
Shanghai Cosmetic - Leslie Moquin
Revue La Ronde n°14
La France de tête - Lot de 4 numéros
Prose postérieure - Les commissaires anonymes
Rasclose - Geoffroy Mathieu
Pø om Pø - Kaja Meyer 































