Exhibition guide
MEP Studio hosts, from July 17 to September 13, “Faultlines”, a photographic project by Martine Dawson dedicated to the houses of Butte, a former mining town in Montana, where domestic space preserves the persistent traces of a territory shaped by extraction and the imagination of the conquest of the American West.
Visit details
- Dates: From Wednesday June 10, 2026 to Sunday September 13, 2026:
- Venue: Maison Européenne de la Photographie, 5 rue de fourcy, Paris
- Price: De 0 à 14 euros.
- Audience: All audiences
- Source: Event page
About the exhibition
Located in the heart of Montana, Butte developed at the end of the 19th century thanks to copper mining. This mining history has profoundly transformed the landscape and structured social life. Today, the city seems suspended between memory and the present. Its streets, its old houses and its land marked by exploitation make up an environment that is both inhabited and spectral, where traces of an industrial past persist.
Martine Dawson approaches this context through the houses, seen as an entry point into local history. Built quickly during mining expansion, they have been transformed over time. Fragile foundations, successive additions and repairs bear witness to uses linked to necessity. Throughout his stays, the artist observes how the inhabitants maintain a link with these places, where traces of the past remain in everyday gestures.
Through photographs of exteriors, interiors and domestic details, Faultlines reveals the house as a space where temporalities overlap. By combining contemporary images and archives, the exhibition highlights these dwellings as surfaces of memory, where mining history, imagination and ways of living today intersect.