Students Interviews - Vilma Rodiu ''Connection-Disconnection'' - interview with Ypatia Kornarou - Moments Collective

Ypatia Kornarou
Dec 10, 2025
5 min read

Author Ypatia Kornarou

From where is the photographic work “Connection–Disconnection” inspired?

The photographic project “Connection–Disconnection” is inspired by the two words “Beautiful Wrecks” and how they became an invisible reflection of thoughts and emotions, where both our personal inner landscapes of blooming and desolation, as well as the universal human need for connection with the other, become the reason for our individual stories of connection and disconnection — with ourselves, with others, with the natural environment, with the visible and the invisible, with the conventional or the unconventional.

@Vilma Rodiu

What does the project explore through visual art photography?

The project explores how any personal, lived story of connection and disconnection can be decoded and communicated through symbols, through the human presence, or even through subtle traces of that presence. If the heart of Connection–Disconnection had a voice, it would whisper: “We are all wonderful, beautiful wrecks. That’s what connects us that we’re all broken, all beautifully imperfect.”

It suggests that through union, closeness, and even through the wounds of every disconnection, we discover ourselves and the other, and we manage to exist truthfully.

@Vilma Rodiu

Meet Our Grand Sponsor Fujifilm Hellas https://www.fujifilm.gr/

Would you like to describe how you develop the themes that concern you during the creation of a photographic work? Where do you primarily focus?

The themes that spark my interest and lead me to begin creating a project are mainly those related to emotional or physical pain, melancholy, loss, nostalgia, the presence or absence of love, inner conflicts, and the feelings these conflicts generate within the human soul.

In the process of creating each photographic work, I start by identifying—and writing down on paper—the emotion I want to express through photography. Then, I focus on finding interior or exterior locations that carry the shadowy aura of the light, color, and atmosphere capable of conveying the emotion I seek to capture in my images.

Another element I pay great attention to is symbolic objects and details. For me, these play perhaps the most important role, as they are what subconsciously evoke in the viewer the sensation and emotion I am aiming to communicate, while at the same time offering the freedom for a personal decoding and interpretation of each symbol or object.

Human presence is also significant in how it is used within my frames to express emotion: the natural, spontaneous movement or stillness of the model; the nude, semi-nude, or clothed body; the forms and shapes created by micro-movements in the face and body; and the attentive focus on small, carefully staged details. The choice of colors and clothing is equally important, as they contribute to conveying the emotional tone I wish to photograph.

In summary, I would say that I focus primarily on the human being, symbolic objects, and the spaces that shape the photographic images I create—images that speak of inner emotional worlds, less radiant perhaps, but with an unfathomable depth of vulnerability, sincerity, and a profound thirst for life. If you would like, I can also edit it into a more artist-statement style or adapt it for an exhibition catalog.

@Vilma Rodiu

Meet our Supporters Municipality of Palaion Faliro https://palaiofaliro.gr/

Is light an important visual tool in the identity of your works? How do you use it?

Light is, for me, the first and most essential tool—it's what determines the final outcome of every photographic frame. I am interested in using light at its two extremes: in dark, underexposed spaces, as well as in its absolute intensity in an outdoor natural setting under the summer sun.These two extremes of light are elements I try to incorporate into my work, even though this approach doesn't always produce the desired result compared to the idea I initially have for each shot.

I am drawn to experimenting with both ends of the lighting spectrum because, despite how challenging it may be on a practical or technical level, when it succeeds, it can produce truly stunning images.

@Vilma Rodiu

Meet our supporter Athens Voice https://www.athensvoice.gr/

When inspiration stops, what do you believe reactivates it? Has this happened to you?

Personally, I believe that inspiration is unstoppable and always within us, even when we feel it has disappeared. Inspiration is like a rare and beautiful flower blooming from the body of a cactus, even when you think that only its thorny exterior exists forever.

I have personally gone through short and long periods where the feeling of “nothing inspires me” dominated. My way of responding was to focus on how I felt and why, allowing myself to fully experience whatever was happening inside and around me creating images in my mind, writing even a single word every few days in a notebook, and giving my inner self the time needed for the experience to mature until I could sense when it was ready to blossom and emerge spontaneously as inspiration.

For inspiration to bear fruit, it needs longer or shorter pauses. When these pauses occur, we must tune in to how we feel in our bodies, what thoughts or emotions we are experiencing during this supposed standstill of inspiration. We need to be silent, to observe within and around even the most insignificant details in our surroundings can become words we jot down in a personal notebook.

We can pick up our camera just to keep ourselves warm creatively, photographing familiar, everyday objects or people around us. We can read, watch films, listen to beautiful music. We can remain open—each of us in our own way and capacity—not only to pleasant external stimuli but also to those that make us uncomfortable or that we avoid. Because it is precisely from these that I have most unexpectedly conceived and been inspired to create the photographic projects that have shaped my artistic journey so far.

@Vilma Rodiu

https://www.nexusmedia.gr/photonet-254/

The dynamic of your photographic identity develops between elements of cinematic narrative and fiction, infused with imagination and mystery. What are your influences? Is it something deeply internal?

I believe that the reason I photograph existed within me as a subconscious, deep sense and need for communication and connection with the environment and the people around me—from my early childhood and teenage years—even though my photographic path began much later in adulthood. It was then that I began to realize that photography was, for me, an inner exploration and introspection of personal emotional landscapes, a way to look beneath the “veils” and see the deeper psychological universe of emotions revealed in my images.Beyond my personal need to create images in which I could lose and find myself, I began to create images in order to hear myself—through my own eyes, through my own gaze—as it manifested in my photographs.

I also often remember being inspired, moved, and transported by the films of Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky, The Color of Pomegranates by Sergei Parajanov, the expressionist films of Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau, and Robert Wiene, the filmography of Hiroshi Teshigahara, as well as through reading the poetry of the “cursed poets” and of Alejandra Pizarnik.

I also recall being profoundly inspired by the unique photographic work of Francesca Woodman, and by various contemporary photographers such as Kamila Kansy, Dara Skully, Nanimensh, Andrea Torres, Ilona Langbroek, Alison Scarpulla, and Katia Chauseva.