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

Débris N°2 - Théo Garnier Greuez
ADBC du Dessin - Jacques Floret
L’Écureuil de James - Alice Brière-Haquet, Liuna Virardi
La France de tête - Lot de 4 numéros
Philonimo - Le Canard de Wittgenstein - Alice Brière-Haquet, Loïc Gaume
Photographic Fields - Joël Van Audenhaege
Asphalte Parade - Alice Meteignier
Tomber dans l'escalier - Jasper Sebastian Stürup
ICCMHW - Atelier Choque Le Goff
Imagos - Noémie Lothe
Pas vu Pas pris - Collectif, Olivier Deloignon, Guillaume Dégé
Oblikvaj 4 - Last minute Shodo - Thomas Perrodin, Ensemble Batida
Machiavel chez les babouins - Tim Ingold
Carnivore - Grow
Jawa Tengah Combo - Fred Maillard
interférence - 2 - maycec
Comic Book (Untitled) - Stéphanie Leinhos
Konrad Becker - Dictionnaire de réalité stratégique
Illusive prosody - Alex Beaurain
Citrus maxima xparadisi - coll.
No Go Zone n°1 Canal Saint-Denis
Atopoz - Collectif
☀ - Manon Demarles
Rue Englelab, La révolution par les livres - Iran 1979 - 1983 - Hannah Darabi
Piano - Joseph Charroy 































