Text by Claudia Bigongiari
All images © Francesco Merlini
Born in Aosta, Italy (1986) and based in Milano, Francesco Merlini has selected documentary photography as the tool to build his long-term projects, always feeling the influence of his photojournalistic background and a strong interest in metaphors and symbolism.
After a bachelor’s degree in industrial design at the Politecnico University of Milan, he started to travel all the four continents. His works has been exhibited worldwide in collective and solo exhibitions, and published on Italian and international outlets.
In 2016 he was selected by the British Journal of Photography for The Talent Issue: Ones to Watch. In 2020, Francesco was shortlisted for the Prix HSBC pour la Photographie. In 2021, he’s been one of the nominees for the Leica Oskar Barnack Award.
Better in the dark than his rider is the last publication by the Italian photographer Francesco Merlini (Aosta,1986), carried out together with Départ pour l’Image (independent publishing studio in Milan) as a reflection on the nature of images and their nocturnal vocation.
The project started at the beginning of 2023 when the photographers, Luca Reffo and Francesca Todde, deeply analysed his ten years old archive. They focused the attention on those images that didn’t belong to any body of constructed work, “kind of photographic orphans stuck in a limbo”. In fact, without the structure of the book, this series about dreams and visions wouldn’t exist.
Born outside already present projects, the suspended images seem the result of someone who, “like a sleepwalker guided by ghosts, seeks for something nameless”.
The selection was made over hundreds of photographs taken over the course of ten years: they were disconnected in terms of time and place, but a kind of story arose among them, and all together unrevealed an in between condition of awareness and sleep. Something that, in specific terms, is called “hypnagogia”: a state of not-so-frequent lucid dreams that allows a certain control and acknowledge over what you are dreaming.
Similarly to this condition, the images by Francesco Merlini resemble a dreamlike suspension of semiconscious representation, the few elements portrayed always leave open many interpretations. Even if they are different scenarios from Francesco’s trips in Africa, United States, Italy, they all seem from the same enigmatic land of mind and memories.
Francesco Merlini’s practice is generally based on longterm projects where every picture is specifically following a purpose. The case of Better in the dark than his rider is different not only because it is built around photographs without a proper destination, but also because it makes the artist rediscovers the lightness of using his camera just for the sake of it.
At its first approach the book can appear chaotic, the flux of images describes the dynamic of continuous transition between lucidity and unconsciousness typical of dreams, “we were able to recreate the imprecision and lack of definition of dreamworld”, explains Merlini.
But even in its (apparent) chaos, a structure is perceivable necessarily requested by the form of the book) which reproduces a journey towards the falling asleep, designing the editing with fundamental steps that slightly change the register inside the narrative.
It starts with figurative associations with the anatomy and physical shape of the eye: photographs but also drawings from the19th century. Through a central body of narrative about the lucid part of dreaming, the final pages lead the reader to a complete loss of the direction of vision: the pure dream.
Here very heterogeneous images of desolate places, animals (which announce the beginning of the fairytale) and mysterious people create an atmosphere where reality and the imaginary combine together, an experience to get lost into. “An apparatus where any single element has been defined in according to have worked side by side”, or one over the other: the book is, in fact, built with many overlappings and repetitions which contribute to reproduce the irrational and uncontrollable dynamic of dreaming.
According to the Italian photographer, dreams are influenced by the experiences and feelings we make everyday in the world. Our mind becomes a repository of latent images which will activate during our sleep. Also, the element of the eye everywhere present inside the book reminds that dreams begin with the sight before moving through the mind. “Our mind collects, selects and edits the fragments of reality that are displayed while dreaming. It’s a mechanism very similar to the world of the photographer”.
This association with the world of photography is also suggested by the cover of Better in the dark than his rider where there are two black kids in the water with their webs. It is a possible visualisation of this mechanism of selection: everything that is fished with the web is what will enter the dreamworld, elements that will sail the unconscious to make us remember them.
As many other photographs of the book the cover is also dark. Usually connected with the sleep and the nightmare, darkness is something that always fascinated Francesco Merlini and that he always researched and portrayed during his trips. However inside Merlini’s imaginary darkness is bright and made by vivid colours. The flux of photographs in the book is also followed by a juxtaposition of colours of pages, that go from blue to red, from purple to grey.
“In the project I wanted to talk about the dreamworld without being dark and dramatic, talking about dreams which, when they are not nightmares, are memories and desires.”
As said before, the photographs alternate with some illustrations from 18th, 19th century’s manuals about dreams and the anatomy of the eye which Merlini used as research. Also the title is drawn from one of these manuals. It regards the comparison between night vision of the horse and the human-rider: the animal, due to the anatomy of its eye, is able to see much better in the dark than people. To travel his path, the rider needs a great dose of trust which allows him to abandon himself to the guidance of the animal “in order to access the dreamworld”.
Very similar to that is the attitude of the photographer when he decides to trust the camera and his intuition to let any control and planned narrative go on a second level. “This overthinking and rigor could kill that amazement that I used to feel when I started to take photographs.”
Better in the dark than his rider is a reflection on the power of images on their own space: the amount of experiences and emotions of our everyday lives is enough for them to create a world similar to reality, a world made out of visual suggestions, as is the world of photography.
BOOK DETAILS:
80 pages
23,5 x 31 cm
Offset UV
Published by Depart pour l’Image
Text by Luca Reffo
First edition of 1000 – July 2023
Second edition of 1200 – November 2023
