The Marcellus Shale Documentary Project (MSDP) is a collaborative photo documentary project focusing on the social and environmental effects of unconventional gas exploration in Pennsylvania. Photographers Brian Cohen, Nina Berman, Scott Goldsmith, Noah Addis, Lynn Johnson and Martha Rial documented the people and places affected by the arrival, in the early years of the twenty-first century, of what is popularly known as "fracking". A book synthesizes the work of the MSDP, which traveled as an exhibit from 2012 to 2016, and then again, with all new material, for several years more. This gallery contains a synthesis of Brian’s contribution to the first phase of the MSDP; the work of all of the photographers, in both pases one and two, can be seen here and here.

The MSDP was generously funded by The Pittsburgh Foundation, Heinz Endowments, Sprout Fund, the William Penn Foundation, the Donald and Sylvia Robinson Foundation, and by several individual donors including Nancy Bernstein, Cathy Raphael, and Josh Whetzel.

Pictured above Pittsburgh Mills shopping mall, 2011.

+

bob miller, farmer, had leased his property for gas drilling. may, 2012.

+

a pipe from a gas well pad crossing a field in butler county, 2012

+

janet and fred mcintyre, 2012

+

a gas drilling site under construction, 2011

+

at the miller farm, 2012

+