msdm publications

Publishing as artistic research
Artist books
Photobooks
Editions
Editorial experiments

msdm publications is an independent artist-run imprint founded by artist and researcher paula roush. Based in Lisbon and operating internationally, it approaches publishing as an expanded artistic practice, where books, photozines, editions, installations, workshops, archives and computational practices become interconnected forms of artistic research.

For msdm, publishing is both practice and methodology: a way of thinking through images, places, archives, generative processes and collective forms of knowledge production. Each publication develops its own editorial form, from limited editions and hand-bound books to modular structures, broadsheets, participatory publications, computational image-making and open archives.

Core focus

Ecological & place-based research
Investigating relationships between landscape, water, plants, memory and photography through long-term artistic research.

Open editorial structures
Developing publications that remain performative, modular, participatory or materially open, inviting different forms of reading, handling and reconfiguration.

Computational & generative practices
Exploring computational image-making, generative processes and editorial cartographies as artistic research methods that extend photography beyond the single image and open new forms of visual, spatial and relational knowledge.

Vernacular photography
Working with found photographs, everyday archives and displaced image collections to explore the social, material and political lives of images.

Selected publications (2001–present)

The catalogue spans artist books, photobooks, editions, broadsheets and experimental publishing projects produced through msdm's artistic research programme.

• Um Olho Verde Outro Azul: Herbário do Antropoceno

• Al-Yom (Today) torn curled folded

• The expanded practice of the artist's book Immerson In The Artist's Museum 

• Studio/Archaeology

• Follow y / our river lea-minal edges | prompts for transitory states of being

• Liquid memories ~ to read with water

• Wide Load [ Bred Last ] A House Moved

• Water Prints

•  Queer Paper Gardens or The Wild Life of Symbols

•  A field (of interconnected realities) or The week of mash-up goodness: Roman

•  Nothing To Undo 

•  SUPER-PRIVATE Sourcing from the Arab Image Foundation Photographic Collections

• Bayroumi  (4,600 questions)

• Bus-Spotting + A Story

• Flora McCallica

• Lisbon Vernacular

• Government Studies

• Floating Fallacy

• The Empty Spaces | Absolute Space point

• Photobook Is  Did You Mean Photo Book Is 

• The Beauties of DECOMPOSITION. Displayed In bibliographical,
historical, and descriptive pulp, interspersed with anecdotes of the arts

• DOMENEST 21 cards for mobile strategies of display & mediation

• Tender Cups. Ten found bras with ten poems about absent breasts

• News from NowhereLockdown (or An Epoch of Unrest)-broadsheet edition

• News from NowhereLockdown (or An Epoch of Unrest)- photobook edition 

• Pink Press

• Al-Yom Today torn curled folded (limited edition)

• SUPER – PRIVATE : SCENES  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

• Rositta

• SEX'N'DATABASE

•  Faz Tu Mesmx: Arte por Instrução

• DOBRAAOBRA: FAZ TU MESMA A OBRA

• Blackchapel Woundings 

• The memory of stones

• Hypnotic Highway (paperback edition)

• Hypnotic Highway (limited edition)

• The past persists in the present in the form of a dream 
(Participatory Architectures, Memory, Revolution)

•  Blackchapel Glaneuse (Why On Earth Would I Want To Be A Flaneuse 
If I Ccan Be A Glaneuse?)

• HHUUGG 1/2/3 

• HHUUGG remix  [with selections from HHUUGG 1, 2 & 3]

• Areopagitica (Milton’s Nose)

• Russian Ballet Riot

• Paintball field (3.06 billion cycles per second)

• Paintball field (hardcover edition)

•  Paintball field (photozine)

• SCHIST | XISTO 

•  TESTED vaio road test 

•  RS FILES london – munich to be continued

•  ergoterapia

•  The Red Ray of Light

• Wasteland

• Office Kabbalah

• Wearables

• SOS:OK (SAVE OUR SOULS: ZERO KILLINGS) Kit

• CHARLES-SAINT

•  Browser Landscapes

•  Out/sourcing  

•  Protest Academy:  ‘What are we doing? What’s happening to us? What needs to be done? I prefer not to’

Collections 

Over the past two decades, msdm publications and artist's books by paula roush have entered the collections of major museums, national libraries, specialist art libraries and academic institutions, reflecting the imprint's longstanding contribution to artists' publishing, photobooks and experimental editorial practices.

Selected public collections

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Library, New York
The National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London
Art Library, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon
Found Photo Foundation / msdm Library, Lisbon

Awards & recognitions

Selected msdm publications have been recognised, shortlisted or exhibited through international photobook and artists' book initiatives, including:

Kassel Photobook Award
Rencontres d'Arles Photobook Awards
Sheffield International Artists' Books Award

The msdm Library

The msdm House–Studio–Gallery in Lisbon hosts a growing reference collection of photobooks, artists' books, editions and printed ephemera. Alongside msdm publications, the library brings together independent publishing, vernacular photography, found image archives and experimental editorial practices, serving both as a research resource and as an evolving exhibition space.

Purchase

You can purchase msdm publications directly from the publisher, through our Lisbon House–Studio–Gallery, via our international Bookshop.org store, or from a small network of independent photobook bookshops and artist-led distributors.

Direct from the publisher

The complete catalogue of photobooks, artist books, editions and broadsheets is available through the msdm online shop.

Visitors are also welcome at the msdm House–Studio–Gallery in Lisbon by appointment. To arrange a visit or enquire about publications, please contact msdm@msdm.org.uk or send us a direct message via Instagram @mobile_strategies

International Print-on-Demand

Many msdm titles are also available worldwide through our Bookshop.org store, where selected publications can be ordered as high-quality print-on-demand editions. This service offers international shipping and extends the availability of titles that may no longer be held in stock by the publisher or specialist bookshops.

Bookshop.org – msdm publications

Selected international stockists

Lisbon

STET – Livros & Fotografias – specialist photobook bookshop.

GRETA – independent bookshop focusing on feminist publishing, artists' books and small presses.

Stockholm & Malmö

Konst/ig Books – international stockist of Wide Load [Bred Last] A House Moved.

London

The Photographers' Gallery Bookshop – international stockist of the Al-Yom (Today) edition.