The Intimate Worlds Shaped By Hobbies

Edge of Humanity Magazine

4 hours ago

Photographer Maryna Syrovatka is an Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Taming the Hobbyhorse’. To see Maryna’s body of work, click on any photograph.

“I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life,” says the fox in The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

We are desperately alone in this world, constantly searching for genuine connections and relationships. Taming the Hobbyhorse grew out of this feeling. The series reflects on hobby as something that has the power to “tame” us and give form to our inner lives.

A hobby demands attention, care, and ongoing engagement. In return, it can nourish a sense of uniqueness and become a source of connection. Through repeated interaction and devotion, we begin to belong to our hobbies as much as they belong to us.

The project looks at hobbies as intimate bonds shaped by commitment, imagination, and emotional investment. They can become an obsession, an escape, or a parallel reality, but also a way to interact with and deal with the world around us.

I photograph people within these private worlds, sometimes exploring the relationship between a person and their hobby, and sometimes the links between a hobby and other parts of their life. Slightly surreal situations create a sense of entering this parallel reality, at times almost like a doorway back to childhood.

Maryna Syrovatka is a Ukrainian-born photographer whose practice extends across portraiture, staged image-making, and artist books. She lives and works in Bratislava, Slovakia. After a career in law, she turned to photography in 2018 and has worked primarily from her Bratislava studio since 2021.

Her work focuses on people at moments when their lives have been interrupted, redirected, or made uncertain. Rooted in studio encounters, conversations, staged situations, and long-term projects, her practice examines how personal experience meets wider social realities. She works with both analogue and digital photography, choosing the process according to the needs of each project.

Her debut photobook Don’t Worry, I’m Fine was published in 2025 and was selected for the PHotoESPAÑA Best Photography Book of the Year Award in the First Publication category.

Her work has been featured in Elle Italia, Ukraine: Love+War by FotoEvidence, Fresh Eyes by GUP Magazine, L’Oeil de la Photographie, and PhotoVogue. Her projects have been exhibited and screened internationally, including in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Croatia, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, the UK, Ireland, and Slovakia.

Recent recognitions include the LensCulture Critics’ Choice Awards 2026, the PhMuseum Photography Grant shortlist (2025), PORTRAITS – Hellerau Photography Award finalist (2025), Rovinj Photodays first place (2025), Rotterdam Photo Single Image (2025), and Der Greif × Grisebach: New Positions (2024)