My 2020 evaluation: Comme ci comme ça — Tomáš Hrivňák Photography

This is a collection of photographs that best reflect my year of 2020, the year of Covid-19. It’s been ten months of ups and downs for me. I have started writing for a big newspaper for the first time. I got my first degree at the university and my first journalistic award ever. But it wasn’t all bells and whistles.

At the beginning of the year, I had, as most did, a completely different roadmap in my mind. I wanted to pursue journalism and I wanted to get as good as possible in tennis photography, travelling around Europe to catch the best ATP and WTA tournaments. Instead, I stayed home and hoped I wouldn’t catch the Vid.

Citizens started wearing masks for the first time in Slovakia.

I have also experienced strong anxiety for the first time in my life. Anxiety to a point I didn’t know if I could bring myself to do literally anything. I got much better when I decided to speak up about it to my parents. They didn’t take it as seriously as I wanted them to but it was fine, I just needed to get it out of my system.

I have also experienced some moments of sadness in March when together with my colleague I was writing roughly two stories a week about small entrepreneurs who were literally days before bankruptcy. They were desperate, their lives were in ruins and I had to work hard to cope with that.

This is a photograph of a doctor and a graduating med student in front of the hospital emergency room. I have spent eigth hours with them on triage of patients. If you speak Slovak, feel free to read my blog about this experience.

My mood was not getting better due to the overall atmosphere in the country and the state of mind where I felt busy and completely useless at the same time. Days got better once summer came. I spent those months at our cottage with friends, going on hikes and trying to focus on a couple of stories. The pandemic wasn’t too prevalent at that point of the year so I managed to sneak in a beer or two with my girlfriend on a nice terrace in the old town of Košice. Life was good.

In September I joined a team of journalists from Denník N for a local journalism project in the town of Rožňava, at the heart of Gemer region, which carries rich mining history. These two weeks have given me a lot of experience. Days were long, we were working 12-15 hours a day. I was shooting photos while also trying to do some reporting for my written stories. But the party of journalists was amazing and I felt really good between them. It was a bit like jumping from your local football pitch to train with the national team all the sudden. I came home feeling very enthusiastic.

Walking in the rural village Brdárka with Martin. M. Šimečka.

When autumn came my mood dropped again. These past months have been hard on my morale. I needed to focus on my education more and had to leave reporting for after my exams. I think I have just become completely stationary after constantly moving for years, and I can’t handle it. I thought I have lost my way to photography as well. I was really sad about it for a while. I couldn’t bring myself to take a real picture, I coulnd’t find any compositions and had zero motivation for trying harder. I felt like this skill-capital that I have accumulated almost a decade, has started to disintegrate and I couldn’t stop the fall.

Nationwide testing for Covid-19 at the State theatre in Košice.

Drive in Covid-19 testing station with paramedics setting up their workshops in public transportation buses.

I have to say, I’m still not completely over these empty feelings that caught me unprepared twice during this pandemic. I’m talking about feelings of complete lack of inspiration for anything, those feelings when you know your not a complete failure, but at the same time you feel like your not working hard enough while you can’t bring yourself to work. The more I looked around on the good old internet for help from other photographers I found, that a lot of photographers I regularly follow have experienced what I have at some point. That gave me a lot of motivation to start to work my way back to the state of mind I enjoyed.

A child form a poor Roma family, peeking through the door out of an apartment in Dobšiná with almost no furniture in it.

I have also found other cures for when one is feeling low. Running. I started to run every other day and I think I found that the feelings of anxiety from the overall pandemic package of shitty situations is just an overstock of energy. And indeed it did help me with my moral quite a bit.

This 2020 summary wasn’t really a celebration of the year being over. I have complained a lot, but there was some good to this year too. I had a chance to come home again, which felt like going on Erasmus to your hometown. I had a chance to reignite with my old friends for a couple of moments and I have learned for good that there are boundaries to living with your parents as an adult. I regret nothing about this year because my family got through it safely. So even know I’m ending 2020 with a bitter mood, I don’t forget that there is some sweetness that comes with it.

March Davis Cup was the last tennis tournament I shot this year.

I wrote these thoughts down for two reasons. One: somebody might stumble upon this blog and feel understood, just like I did when I found those videos on YouTube from my favourite photographers. Second: I want to capture the atmosphere of this year for documentary purposes. I don’t keep a journal and I know I might forget this once life starts getting more exciting again and you know what they say, you’ve got to remember your low to recognize your high.