This photographer documented life as a young person during the pandemic
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New Year’s Eve 2020 was peculiar for many of us. As Coronavirus continued to sweep the globe, usual end-of-year reflections were replaced by a build-up of collective grief. Around the world, Covid-19 socializing restrictions put obstacles in the way of celebrations.

For German photographer Valentin Goppel, the uniqueness of the situation was underscored by his companions: Instead of his spending the night with his flatmates as he would do usually, he was instead alone with his girlfriend’s younger brother and two of his friends, making the initial images for what would become Goppel’s first photobook, “Zwischen den Jahren.”

“For weeks before, her brother had tried to persuade his parents to let him spend New Year’s Eve with his friends, which (as a young person) I found really understandable, but his parents didn’t,” the photographer recalled in an interview with CNN. “In the end, (they relented when) he agreed to spend four days (quarantining) in his room afterwards. It was a strange thing, this commitment to meeting your friends just for a few hours — then spending days alone — but to him it was worth it.”