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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Illusive prosody - Alex Beaurain
Le style anthropocène - Philippe Rahm
Vases Communicants - Hélène Drénou
La France de tête - Lot de 4 numéros
La traversée - Magali Brueder
Sans-Titre - Laurens Van'T Riet
La grande surface de réparation - Gilles Pourtier
Pénurie - Zivo, Jérôme Meizoz
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 1 - Claire Pedot
Promenade au pays de l'écriture - Armando Petrucci
Temps d'arrêt - Etienne Buyse
Papier magazine n°06 - Coupe du monde
Keywording (Post) Contemporary Art - Greta Rusttt
Alma Mater n°1
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
ARTZINES #1, Paris issue
Sans titre - Chris Kiss
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 2 - Claire Pedot
Le dos des choses - Guillaume Goutal
La construction - Perrine Le Querrec
Holy etc. - Fabienne Radi
Strates & Archipels - Pierre Merle
Cuadernos - Henry Deletra
Roven n°5
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Fluent - Laëticia Donval
Ventoline 5 - Coll.
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À partir de n°1 - Coll.
Oblikvaj 4 - Last minute Shodo - Thomas Perrodin, Ensemble Batida
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Paysageur n°3 - Mobiles
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Talweg 6 - La distance
Éclats III - Athanor
Le Choix du peuple - Nicolas Savary, Tilo Steireif
Photographic Fields - Joël Van Audenhaege
Image Canoë - Jérémie Gindre
Gruppen n°13 - Collectif
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
L'inventaire des destructions - Éric Watier
Revue La Ronde n°14
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