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

akaBB - tribute to Roni horn
Good Company - Paul Van der Eerden
Atopoz - Collectif
Avec ce qu'il resterait à dire - Anne Maurel
Acteurs d'un film gravé. Docteur A. Infirmier O. - Annabelle Dupret, Olivier Deprez et Adolpho Avril
Fluent - Laëticia Donval
Une goutte d'homme - Alice Dourlen
Roven n°5
SKKS - Gilles Pourtier
本の本の本 - antoine lefebvre editions,
Sans titre - Chris Kiss
It was a good day - Jeremy Le Corvaisier
Holy Mountain - Maia Matches, Knuckles & Notch
Les Grands Ensembles - Léo Guy-Denarcy
Dessins pour Rugir - Virginie Rochetti
ICCMHW - Atelier Choque Le Goff
Rois de la forêt - Alain Garlan
Dans la Lune - Fanette Mellier
Blanche n°2 - Claude Closky
Je ne peux pas ne pas - Geneviève Romang
Mosaïque d'asphalte - Jack Torrance
Le dos des choses - Guillaume Goutal
Amos Gitai et l'enjeu des archives - Jean-Michel Frodon
Le Choix du peuple - Nicolas Savary, Tilo Steireif
Un cheval, des silex - Benoît Maire, Sally Bonn
Strates & Archipels - Pierre Merle
Prototype 02 - morcellement
WREK The Algorithm! - Aarnoud Rommens, Olivier Deprez
Slanted 30 - Athens
OKATAOKA MEETS FOLK ART SERIES “HELLO MEXICO”
Le singe et le bijoux - Roxane Lumeret
Cuadernos - Henry Deletra
Watch out - Anne-Émilie-Philippe
Seoul Flowers & Trees - tribute to Lee Friedlander 































