‘Hollowed Out’ at Photoville Festival 2025

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At New York City's annual Photoville Festival, the Pulitzer Center will present Hollowed Out, reporter and photographer Quinn Glabicki's project documenting how unseen pollution harms families, jeopardizing their health and homes.

Photoville is a free, outdoor event with exhibits in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, on June 7-22, 2025. The festival will include in-person and virtual storytelling events, artist talks, educational programming, and open-air exhibitions in parks and other New York public spaces. 

Learn more about the exhibit below, and click here to learn more about Photoville.

Additionally, join us for two sessions with PublicSource photojournalists Quinn Glabicki and Stephanie Strasburg to dive into how they build trust with communities and capture these images. 

For the general public, join us on Saturday, June 7th at 2:45pm at St. Ann's Warehouse for "Visualizing the Invisible: Photojournalism in Underreported Communities."

Students are invited to join us on Sunday, June 8th from 10:00am to 1:00pm at Bronx Documentary for "Visualizing the Invisible: Student Photojournalism Workshop," hosted in collaboration with Press Pass NYC. Registration is required.

Pittsburgh gas giant EQT Corporation is the United States’ largest producer of fracked natural gas. Amid a global rush to decarbonize, the company's CEO, Toby Rice, touts EQT's gas exports as “the largest green initiative on the planet.” 

But among rural communities in northern Appalachia, where the company operates, the harsh realities of gas extraction hit home.

In Knob Fork, West Virginia, four neighboring families abandoned their homes after experiencing years of symptoms consistent with exposure to airborne volatile organic compounds, the same chemicals released by EQT in the rural hollow next door. 

Residents of New Freeport, Pennsylvania, endured more than two years of undrinkable groundwater after a June 2022 “frack-out” sent fluid and gas erupting along Main Street. Residents reported painful rashes after showering and foul, methane-spiked water in local wells. A federal class-action lawsuit is pending.

“These issues exist everywhere at some scale. It’s almost expected: illness in proximity to industry.” 

Pulitzer Center grantee Quinn Glabicki asks: “How do we document this banality of horror?”

Glabicki's report was originally published by PublicSource in March 2024. EQT's Gas Play won Pictures of the Year's first place award in the Local News Picture Story category.

Quinn Glabicki is a photojournalist and writer based in Pittsburgh. Born and raised in the Rust Belt, Glabicki focuses his long-term work on communities impacted by climate change and the footprint of industry in Appalachia. 

Glabicki’s work has been published by The New York Times, Reuters, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian, among other outlets. He currently covers climate change and the environment for PublicSource.