AL-YOM TODAY torn curled folded

AL-YOM TODAY torn curled folded

paula roush — msdm publications

Digital version of the third edition (2026)

AL-YOM TODAY torn curled folded is a photo-textual artist publication bringing together photographs (of photographs), research, essays and editorial design by paula roush, working from the AL-Yom collection at the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut.

The publication incorporates excerpts from L’Ombre d’une ville (Elie-Pierre Sabbag, Paris: Buchet Chastel, 1994), and is structured through research and editorial correspondence conducted in Beirut in 2015.

The project began at the Arab Image Foundation, where several storage boxes labelled “AL-Yom” contained photographs classified as “torn, curled, folded” — a working archival designation for images whose damage exceeds conventional preservation thresholds.

Rather than restoring the archive to a stable historical narrative, the book works from within this instability.

Fragmentation, delay and contradiction are treated as structural conditions.

Originally produced as a loose-leaf boxed edition in Beirut (2015), and subsequently expanded in London (2020), the third edition (2026) reassembles the photo-essay and email-based research into a single bound volume.

This digital version reproduces the third edition, preserving its editorial sequence and the relationship between image, archive and text.

This book exists in more than one material state. None of them resolves the archive.

Publication details

• Artist, research, essays and editorial design: paula roush
• Publisher: msdm publications
• Source archive: Arab Image Foundation, Beirut — AL-Yom collection
• Text: Elie-Pierre Sabbag, excerpts from L’Ombre d’une ville
• Research and editorial correspondence: Beirut, 2015
• Third edition: Lisbon, 2026
• Digital format: PDF
• Pages: 216
• Languages: English / French