A gas-drilling rig in Hopewell Township area; photo by Scott Goldsmith on June 21, 2010

The Marcellus Shale Documentary Project, a Center for Photography at Woodstock (CPW) exhibition, is in its final weeks (June 29 to August 18, 2013). The show is curated by Laura Domencic, director of the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. This photographic survey, compiled over ten months beginning in late 2011, features the works of six world-class photographers: Noah Addis, Nina Berman, Brian Cohen, Scott Goldsmith, Lynn Johnson, and Martha Rial. They took the responsibility of documenting the lives of Pennsylvanians affected by natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale region.

The show debuted at the Pittsburgh Center of the Arts in Oct. 2012 and seeks to draw on the power of photography to inform and move public opinion on the issue of hydraulic fracturing—or “fracking” as it is more commonly known. It follows a photographic tradition established in 1935 when the U.S. government initiated the Farm Security Administration, which sent a group of photographers to document the conditions of those affected by the Great Depression. Just as the resulting photographs humanized the tragic stories of loss and deprivation in the mid-twentieth century, enabling the nation to become unified in its understanding of the era it was experiencing, the photographers featured here help visualize one of the most contentious issues of our time—our struggle between our need for energy and our stewardship of the natural environment.

There is an online archive.  CPW is located at 59 Tinker Street in Woodstock, NY and the galleries are free and open to the public, Wednesday through Sunday, from 12 to 5 p.m. For directions or further information, call 845-679-9957 or email

in**@cp*.org











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~ Weston Blelock