NEWS18: Beyond the Lenses : With Kuntal Joisher

14 July 2015

By Koral Dasgupta   |  Click here for the Original Article on News18

It was the week of my book launch and life was pretty hectic with all arranging, coordinating and networking. So researching on the intense works of a stranger meant giving up few additional hours of sleep one night, but I was far from complaining. Having returned from Kashmir just a month back with a Travel Diary capturing soul-baring moments of the trip, the memories still fresh and the heart unreasonably longing to go back, Kuntal’s photography offered just the perfect comfort to the restless, insomniac nerves! And yet, each of the masterpieces captured by his camera prominently spelt out the basic difference between me and him. I am a tourist; he a traveller. I chose beauty of nature; he embraced nature in totality, not trying to filter out beauty from the associated danger. I was more at the surface; he committed himself to explore the depths. There was life in those motionless photographs. He hadn’t tried to confine nature; just cracked a still, visual perspective for endless exceptional experiences through his trips to the mountains.

The best pair of lenses that has ever captured art are the eyes anyway!

Kuntal Joisher, a Gujrati smitten into Mumbai, is striving to climb the Everest. His passion for mountaineering has led him to climb mountain ranges across the world, including the Nepal and Indian Himalayas, the Patagonia, the Western Ghats and more. Photography came to him as an obvious next, as soon as he scripted mountaineering as his language of life! Featured today in BBC Earth, National Geographic and many other sites and magazines reporting Mother Nature, it would be difficult for an onlooker to believe that he is not formally trained into photography, neither were his photographs clicked with commercial ambitions! Explains Kuntal, “National Geographic has an online gallery and community editors keep working on them going through millions of submissions on daily basis. They run a photo gallery on their website called Daily dozen. They feature selected photos there and highlight a “photo of the day.” Every few weeks I submitted and my photographs got selected. BBC was specifically looking for Big Earth themed photos to explore the big features of our planet. The crevasse on Everest that I had clicked went really well with the concept explaining how big our planet is. After a few weeks of my submission with them, they contacted for a small interview and reported it subsequently.”

Kuntal today uses a Nikon D7000 along with a Nikon 16-85 VR lens. His images are surreal, and sometimes scary! They reflect the kind of pains and efforts it must have taken for a trekker to reach there. But Kuntal asserts that he might be a daring mountaineer but a more relaxed photographer. He takes those snaps to bring them back to the world which is less opportune and give them a taste of Nature that they haven’t yet explored. The images are his way of attesting that the world is a beautiful place to live in, beyond the mundane that may have kept people unfairly occupied! “Not everyone can reach everywhere,” says Kuntal, “But when you know what magnificence exists in the same planet you may make a conscious choice of conserving it; you may alter some of your decisions so that it creates a difference and benefits Mother Earth! I hope my photography can help drive this cause. And also, I wish that they inspire travel. Travelling and exposing yourself to nature is a very grounding experience; it can change a person. Having said that, let me also tell you that I take only calculated risks with my photography. I am a trained mountaineer and so I understand the terrain. My shots are taken prioritising my safety. There had been moments when I had faced spectacular works of Nature, but refrained from capturing it because of the risk associated. I don’t want to die so early when there is so much more to be seen in life! But tell me something; don’t you think it’s better to die while clicking the exuberance of nature rather than dying while walking on the road and getting hit by a car? Who is safe anyway?”

Behind destining himself into mountaineering and photography, Kuntal has a cause. That’s about his father, who has been living with Lewy Body dementia (a form of dementia that shares degenerative characteristics with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's) for over a decade. Years ago, when the disease started interfering with the remnants of his independence, Kuntal became his primary caregiver and was forced to experience the devastating effects of the illness not only on his father, but also on the rest of his family! He decided to use his journey to Everest as a platform to raise awareness for the crippling disease.

I hence wonder how was his family strong enough to allow him follow a dangerous passion, given that the other man of the family is already bedridden. It is usual in our societies to expect security from men, as much as educated urbans claim that women are capable of providing and protecting themselves. Kuntal helps me to put this in perspective. “The patriarchal society puts too much pressure on a man – be it financial, physical and emotional,” he says! But growing up in a very non-discriminatory environment had allowed him to leave behind the typical expectations of mincing money through a self made business, as often happens in a Gujrati household. He shed prejudices when he studied abroad and met people from different backgrounds. Today, he works from home, taking care of his father when his mom wife or sister needs to be away. They take turns when he is out mountaineering! “I don’t have a life without mountaineering and the calling is too intense to avoid. My family is supportive and positive, though they’re probably still not completely convinced that this is my way of life. For obvious reasons of course!” He explains. May be the family loves him more than they love themselves and hence sources the strength to let him go for his adventures!

Frequent journey to the mountains fuelled a simultaneous passion to immortalise some moments of nature and bring it back to the plains for the less privileged beings. Once the camera came into his possession, Kuntal promised himself to soon educate himself and get his shots perfect. He read few books on photography, because there was no time left to go for a formal training. He names “Understanding Exposure” as a brilliant guide for amateurs because it helps design one’s personal frame and hence grasp the basics regarding light and focus more from a technical perspective rather than merely capturing some scattered travel experiences.

Very recently, Kuntal had held a photography exhibition in Mumbai to raise relief funds against the Nepal earthquake. This non-commercial initiative was not meant to bring back money to his bank, but its single goal was to help Nepal. Elaborates Kuntal, “I am looking forward to attempt the Everest again next year and for that I need to raise funds. People I work with did come up with a lot of suggestions which made sense at various levels. The exhibition could open doors for my networking and I could interact with a lot of people who might be ready to donate. Or the idea of selling calendar to the corporate was great as a means to raise money. Such indirect commercial suggestions kept cropping up from group who helped with my initiative. But our basic objective was very clear. It was to route funds for the Himalayan Club which is a registered NGO working on Nepal rehabilitation.”

Not only was his aim very clear with the exhibition, but Kuntal was also very well decided on what he ever wanted to capture or feature. “Disaster wasn’t what I wanted to show. Photographs of people dying or getting rescued are too depressing. Standing there and clicking them is not a smart thing to do either. I can say that because I have personally survived an avalanche, lost some very close friends and experienced the sufferings both emotionally and otherwise. My theme was to showcase the beauty of Nepal, re-promote tourism in the country, and help them build back what they have lost. I have a huge collection of photos; picking and choosing from them was a tedious job. I tried to ensure that the images I selected communicate the right stories. Planning the displays, finalizing the venue, coupling the photographs with a write-up of their history, brainstorming on the marketing ideas for the exhibition and getting people to know about it, was a tiring and challenging effort. But the learning this exercise brought with it was spectacular. All photographs measuring 24x16 inches were made available for Rs. 5000/-. Instead of offering boutique photographs, we sold as many prints for a single picture because this was for a cause. In two days we raised Rs. 3.5 lacs, all of which directly went to The Himalayan Club from the buyers. Here I framed and packed and got them sent to the individuals, basically giving a gift for their donations for Nepal. This model also made it easier for the people who often aren’t sure where to donate or what happens with the donation money.

Whatever the young mountaineer and photographer have achieved today has required not only the unconditional support of his family but also the confidence of a greater world that came forward to offer help! Kuntal fondly recalls how CallFire, the company he was working with, sponsored his first trip to the Everest in 2014! He had just put across the idea to his management and after a few weeks they came up declaring that they’d sponsor everything about his journey. That was an all inclusive expense of Rs. 40-45 Lacs! Even when intense training made it difficult for him to involve rigorously in professional projects, they cooperated and offered him to take up work whenever he was ready. They also sponsored a 60 minute documentary called Call To Everest during that time, covering his journey right from his childhood till the Everest. They allowed him to work from home, take as many leaves as required for his expeditions, of course unpaid, but made sure he could retain the job as long as he was good with fulfilling responsibilities. And though they did not sponsor his second trip in 2015, CallFire let him keep all the gear and camera equipment thus serving as the backbone support to Kuntal’s expeditions. The basic ideology of his organisation is to help sustain small and medium businesses. They connected with the concept of a common man trying to achieve an uncommon dream, and participated in carving his way ahead. Says Kuntal, “I am ever thankful for the great work-life balance my organisation has given me. No other employer would stand by their employee this way.” Probably, this proves once again that when you’re committed to a journey, unknown forces come together to destine your path towards achievements.

Kuntal’s experiences through mountaineering and photography is scattered all over the internet. Yet he chose to narrate another exclusive moment of his being when I asked for it. “So this was my 2nd trip to Nepal with Tim Rippel from Peak Freaks. I was part of the team that was climbing Mt. Pumori in the Everest valley. We were trekking up the valley and our stop for the day was Dingboche village. Dingboche offers an amazing view of the majestic Mt. Ama Dablam, a view which is very different from the more "popular" view of the peak that you get from Tengboche/Pangboche. Anyway it was almost full moon night, and all of us were fast asleep. It was around 1.30 am in the night when there was loud knocking on our door. Usually I have a sound sleep at night and don’t wake up easily. However my room-mate did, and he started waking me up furiously as if something had happened. I woke up completely zonked and then headed towards the door to find an animated and agitated Tim waiting for me. He seemed angry about something and I wondered what it was at this hour! He demanded to know how could I sleep the night off, and my reaction was what am I otherwise supposed to do at 1.30 in the night! He dragged me outside and that’s when I realised what I had been missing! It was a clear sky with all the peaks shining from the reflecting moonlight. It was mesmerising! Though it was blazingly cold, I got my camera out, put on the 50 mm prime and started taking shots of the scenes. It was so cold that within seconds there was condensation forming on my lens glass. On top of that I didn't even have a tripod so I had to build a make-shift one with help of few stones. But what I captured and what I saw made every effort worth it!”

This year when the devastating earthquake shook the northern belts, Kuntal Joisher had escaped a near-death experience. And yet, in 2016 he aims to target the Everest once again, of course with the CallFire flag as a part of his costumes. Because death for him is not the predestined end that everyone has to face one day; it is rather the fear that caps enthusiasms and stops people from going ahead, taking the risk and winning it over for themselves more than for the rest of the world! He deserves success and we wish him that.

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