Interdisciplinary Collaboration

The Architecture of the Trap Project

JoAnn Stevelos · Sarah Blesener

Exhibit

An interdisciplinary collaboration with photojournalist Sarah Blesener exploring family archives, memory, complicity, and the ethics of looking. What happens when an inherited archive begins to reveal truths its maker worked to conceal?

Our work begins with my mother’s photographs. She documented holidays, sacraments, and vacations during the years a Catholic priest was abusing her children. The albums preserved the appearance of a happy family. Together, Sarah and I examine what those photographs show, what they leave out, and how I might reclaim the telling of my own life.

After nearly two years of work, several artist residencies, and countless conversations, our collaboration is featured at the 2026 ZOOM Photo Festival in Saguenay, Quebec, October 7–November 1.

The exhibition also examines how journalists work with survivors of sexual violence. How do you enter someone’s life, earn their trust, and eventually leave? Who decides what is shown? What does the person sharing their history retain control over, both during the reporting and after publication?

Sarah is a photojournalist and a survivor. I am a writer and a survivor. Those experiences shape our decisions about the photographs, the writing, and the captions. Over time, we became collaborators and friends, and our relationship became part of the work itself.

At the festival, Sarah has been sharing the project through talks and student workshops. She has described visitors spending time with the photographs and being deeply moved by them. We worked carefully on the captions, which ask viewers to consider how the images were made, whose account they preserve, and what it means to look at them now.

We are also working with Spain-based graphic designer Serena Gramaglia on our first zine, bringing the photographs and writing together in a form we can share more widely.

Our hope is that this work helps journalists listen more carefully and gives survivors greater confidence that they can share their stories while retaining authority over how those stories are told.

Learn more about the 2026 ZOOM Photo Festival →

A Process of Inquiry

Working across photography, memoir, interviews, performance, and visual experimentation, The Architecture of the Trap Project is a collaboration between writer JoAnn Stevelos and photographer Sarah Blesener.

Rather than presenting a finished narrative, the project is built around a process of inquiry. Its architecture is composed of several interwoven threads that continually inform one another.

The collaboration is not simply a means of making the project.

It is one of its primary subjects.

Interwoven Threads

At the center of the project is the relationship between JoAnn and Sarah. Their conversations, questions, disagreements, discoveries, and shared acts of looking become part of the work itself.

The Archive

Family photographs, albums, letters, legal documents, and personal artifacts serve as both evidence and mystery. As the archive is uncovered, new meanings emerge, challenging long-held assumptions about memory, silence, and complicity

Reworking the Archive

The project investigates how archival material can be transformed rather than simply reproduced. Through photography, writing, visual interventions, and performance, images are reconsidered, reframed, and placed into new conversations that invite reflection rather than certainty.

Public Witness

As private materials move into public space, the project considers the ethical responsibilities of showing difficult images and telling difficult stories. It asks how art can reveal truth while protecting dignity, and how archives can become places of dialogue rather than judgment.

Multiple Forms of Storytelling

The project braids together:

Poetry

Memoir & personal essays

Photography

Conversations between the collaborators

Excerpts from a developing play

Archival documents

Process notes & questions

Visual experiments

Court Material Design

The Physical Form of the Work

The physical form of the project reflects its conceptual architecture — different materials marking different registers of memory, evidence, and witness.