April 9 – May 30, 2015
The Marcellus Shale Documentary Project features photography by Noah Addis, Nina Berman, Brian Cohen, Scott Goldsmith, Lynn Johnson and Martha Rial, curated by Laura Domencic. Since 2012, the six artists of the Marcellus Shale Documentary Project have photographed the complex story of Marcellus Shale gas drilling in Pennsylvania. They have traveled across the state, meeting with farmers, homeowners, tenants, medical practitioners, engineers, legal professionals, casual protesters and full-blown activists, people who have benefited from gas drilling and to those who have been victimized; all people whose lives have been forever changed, for better and for worse by the quest for natural gas.
Each photographer has brought a unique voice and perspective to this intensely contested and entangled subject. They have identified locations that range from intensively drilled to the margins of the gas fields. Together, these six photographers offer a compelling narrative that presents a conscientious appraisal of how the arrival of Marcellus Shale drilling has affected communities around the Commonwealth.
In conjunction with this exhibition, Noah Addis will be teaching The Politics of Landscape Photography at PPAC. Register today!
Noah Addis, Photographer: Noah Addis has been working as an artist, photojournalist and documentary photographer for more than fifteen years. His work has been published in major publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, People, US News & World Report, Life’s Year in Pictures and many others. Addis graduated Magna Cum Laude from Drexel University in Philadelphia with a degree in Photography. He also studied at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine. He is currently represented by the Corbis photo agency in New York.
Nina Berman, Photographer: Nina Berman is a documentary photographer with a primary interest in the American political and social landscape. Her work has been extensively published, exhibited and collected, receiving awards in art and journalism from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation and the Open Society Institute documentary photography fund among others. Her images of wounded American veterans from the Iraq War are internationally known with recent exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art 2010 Biennial, the Milano Triennale, the New Orleans Museum of Art and Princeton University. She is the author of two monographs, Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, and Homeland, both published by Trolley. She is a member of the NOOR photo collective based in Amsterdam. She lives in New York City.
Brian Cohen, Photographer and Project Manager: A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Cohen specializes in documentary and editorial photography. He holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Binghamton University at the State University of New York with expertise in Visual Culture Studies. Cohen has published work on the role of photography in shaping public opinion. His latest photographic work focuses on documenting Pittsburgh’s remarkable transition and is featured regularly on Pop City.
Scott Goldsmith, Photographer: Scott Goldsmith has photographed feature stories for a wide variety of magazines including: The National Geographic, LIFE, TIME, Fortune, Business Week. Sports Illustrated and People. His work has taken him to the jungles of Costa Rica, the swamps of Jamaica, the slums of Haiti, caves, deserts, and several rides on Air Force One with the president. He has worked in 49 of the 50 US states and 10 foreign countries. Scott has won over 100 awards for his work including the 2007, 2008, 2009 editions of Communication Arts and the 2011 Black & White International Spider Awards. In October of 2011 he was honored by the National Academy of Science for work published by the National Geographic.
Lynn Johnson, Photographer: Johnson holds a B.A. in Photographic Illustration and Photojournalism from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and a Masters from the School of Visual Communications at Ohio University. She was a Staff Photographer at The Pittsburgh Press for seven years before beginning her freelance career as a contract photographer for Black Star then Aurora Photos. In 2012, Lynn was honored with the National Geographic Photographers’ Photographer Award. She is currently represented by the National Geographic Image Collection.
Martha Rial, Photographer: Rial is a Pittsburgh-based photographer who specializes in documentary, editorial, travel and portrait photography. Rial is winner of the Scripps Howard Foundation Award for Photojournalism, National Headliner Award, Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography, and named Pennsylvania News Photographer of the Year. Rial frequently lectures and exhibits her work nationally.
Laura Domencic, Director, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, and curator: Domencic holds a BFA in Art from Carnegie Mellon University. She studied photography and textiles at the University of Tasmania, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia. Domencic worked at Pittsburgh’s Society of Contemporary Craft and Sweetwater Center for the Arts prior to joining the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. She was instrumental in saving the Center and negotiating the merger with Pittsburgh Filmmakers.
This exhibition is presented with the generous support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and PPAC’s donors and members.
The Marcellus Shale Documentary Project was made possible with the support by the Sprout Fund, the Pittsburgh Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, the William Penn Foundation, the Donald and Sylvia Robinson Foundation, Josh Whetzel, Nancy Bernstein, and Cathy Raphael.
