Description
Al-Yom Today Torn Curled Folded is a photo-textual publication developed from a damaged photographic archive associated with the Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Yom, active until its violent interruption at the outbreak of the civil war in 1975.
The project began at the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut, 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. The photographs bore accumulated traces of humidity, pressure, repeated handling, and displacement. Damage appeared not as a single event, but as duration.
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.
The publication brings together photographs (of photographs), excerpts from Elie-Pierre Sabbag’s L’Ombre d’une ville (Paris: Buchet Chastel, 1994), and a sequence of email correspondence documenting research conducted in Beirut in 2015. Moving between image, essay, and editorial design, the book treats the archive not as material to be repaired, but as a condition to be worked through.
photographs (of photographs), research, essays and editorial design: paula roush
source archive: Arab Image Foundation, Beirut — Al-Yom collection
text: Elie-Pierre Sabbag (excerpts from L’Ombre d’une ville, Paris: Buchet Chastel, 1994)
research and editorial structure: email correspondence conducted in Beirut, 2015
pages: 216
language: English / French
printing: full colour (interior)
paper:
– 120 gsm recycled uncoated (paperback interior)
– 100 gsm uncoated (hardcover interior)
cover:
– 170 gsm uncoated, grayscale printing (paperback)
– adhesive casebound, grayscale printing with matt lamination (hardcover)
binding:
– perfect bound (paperback)
– adhesive casebound (hardcover)
dimensions: 10.5 × 14.8 cm (A6, portrait)
isbn: 978-1-7396192-0-6
third edition: 2026
edition: 500 numbered copies
published by: msdm publications
read more:
Al-Yom, Third Edition: Re-Editing an Unstable Correspondence
