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

Manifeste d'intérieurs ; penser dans les médias élargis - Javier Fernández Contreras
Gros Gris n°4 - Duel
Teddy et le Grand Terrible - Orian Mariat.
Before Science - Gilles Pourtier, Anne-Claire Broc'h
Michael Riedel - Milan Ther
Dédale - Laurent Chardon
Turbo Decompress - Coll.
Pø om Pø - Kaja Meyer
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
La Grande révolution - Une histoire de l'architecture féministe - Dolores Hayden
Modern Instances, The Craft of Photography - Stephen Shore
Machiavel chez les babouins - Tim Ingold
Polyphème (d'après Euripide) - J. & E. LeGlatin
Retour d'y voir - n° 1 & 2 - Mamco
Tanière de lune - Maria-Mercé Marçal
Le dos des choses - Guillaume Goutal
RÉVÉSZ LÁSZLÓ LÁSZLÓ , Not Secret
Editer l’art – Leszek Brogowski
Génération dakou - Yann Jun + CD
Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander
Radio-Art - Tetsuo Kogawa
Farandole - Jérémie Fischer
Les Climats II (Japon) - Lola Reboud, Mariko Takeuchi
Éclats III - Athanor
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
Jířa - Lucie Lučanská
interférence - 3 - maycec
Shanghai Cosmetic - Leslie Moquin
La Colombe de Kant - Alice BRIÈRE-HAQUET / Émilie VAST
Talweg 6 - La distance
Le blanc nez - Fouss Daniel
Poétique d'une introspection visuelle - Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis, Alex Barbier
Délié - Baptiste Oberson
Cyclone - Juliette Chalaye
Konrad Becker - Dictionnaire de réalité stratégique
Mökki n°2
Du Fennec au Sahara - Guillaume Pinard
Comment quitter la terre ? - Jill Gasparina, Christophe Kihm, Anne-Lyse Renon
Tchat - Gary Colin 































