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

On dirait le sud - Anne-Sophie Turion
À partir de n°1 - Coll.
America - Ayline Olukman, Hélène Gaudy
We want to look up at the Sun, but could the Sun be looking down on us? - Rudy Guedj & Olivier Goethals
Entretiens – Jérôme Dupeyrat
La mémoire en acte - Quarente ans de création musicale
Acteurs d'un film gravé. Docteur A. Infirmier O. - Annabelle Dupret, Olivier Deprez et Adolpho Avril
Saint Julien l'hospitalier Tome 1 - Claire Pedot
Poster Tribune # 11
Sans titre - Benjamin Hartmann
Mission Control - Emir Karyo & Jan Wojda
Un peu comme voir dans la nuit - Leif Elggren + CD
Sillo n°3 - Le Fauve
16 x 421 - Lorraine Druon
Soleil, eau, vent : vers l'autonomie énergétique - Delphine Bauer
Jířa - Lucie Lučanská
Mökki n°2
Editer l’art – Leszek Brogowski
Breaking Atoms - Alex Besikian
Dernier royaume - Quentin Derouet
Le chateau enchanté - Atelier Mclane
L'abécédaire d'un typographe - Gerrit Noordzij; Jost Hochuli
Polyphème (d'après Euripide) - J. & E. LeGlatin
Auprès, au sein — Julien Van Anholt
Rasclose - Geoffroy Mathieu
akaBB - tribute to Roni horn 































