Kunal has been exposed to photography from a very young age, being the son of one of India’s leading advertising & industrial photographers, the late Wilas Bhendé. He has grown up in an environment conducive to photography being surrounded with not only books and material related to the art but also an ongoing in-direct training to various photography techniques.

His father was the first photographer to introduce large format photography to India by shooting the 4”x 5” format. He specialized in shooting film up to 8” x 10”, a format that was unknown to the country. Growing up exposed to the kind of eye for perfection and a penchant for new techniques and equipment his father had, Kunal started taking a keen interest in the art of photography.

Armed with a most basic Nikormat camera and some rolls of Black & White & Color Negative film, he started shooting various subjects which caught his eye, wether it was some gorgeous sunsets out of their small apartment overlooking the Arabian Sea or it was his grandmother sitting on a rocking chair. He took keen interest in understanding and learning the complete process of photography including developing the film in the appropriate chemical processes meant for various films and then make prints in the good old darkroom with an enlarger. It was not only taking the photograph which he found exciting but also the process that followed it to it’s final print form.

During his childhood, Kunal also grew up with a love for computer technology after his father brought a home computer for him. He instantly took to it trying to figure out a way to get his passion of drawing on the computer screen. This involved learning programming techniques as there was no mouse or graphical interface at the time. He managed to master it quite well and proceeded to write software for creating graphics and art on the computer. When his father noticed his talent for computer graphics, he kept upgrading the computer technology (like he did with his own camera equipment) and exposed Kunal to various platforms. As a ‘thank you’ to his father, Kunal programmed a basic billing and printing system for his studio to replace the earlier ‘typewriter’ bills. He was 9 at the time.

Over the years, Kunal’s passion for art and computer technology snowballed into a profession of Graphic Design. He has helped several individuals and leading advertising agencies by training them on the correct use of software for graphic design and photo retouching, keeping aesthetics of the art intact. On several occasions he had to literally go into lectures on why creative people should not go overboard with computer software by using multiple fonts in a single layout just because the system had so many. Or then to not  manipulate colors and apply effects on photographs when it was not required.

Photography remained a passionate hobby through his 20’s & 30’s and accompanied with a love for travel, that he also acquired from his father, he landed up shooting endless rolls of film on his trips amounting to thousands of photographs. His eye caught very diverse visuals from people and situations to street lamps and building facades. He finds symmetry very interesting and also loves capturing various kinds of visuals that bring a certain graphical image to his mind. His loves to capture elements that represent eras gone by and is fascinated by the kind of history behind them.

In 2005, he got his hands on a basic digital camera for the first time after dabbling with the technology way back in 1994. Digital technology has led him back to the basics of the photography process and he has worked over the last few years in understanding the right way of working with digital files and both the limitations and the advantages it brings.

Today, this experience over the years has led him to set up a digital version of the good old darkroom concept where he now processes and prints his own photographs in limited editions using the best of archival printing technology. Kunal strongly believes that the no one but the photographer remembers what his eye sees. Therefore, he is the only one who can do justice to any corrections and print it to represent his vision. No one else.

All prints are printed using an archival printer on archival matte paper. This combination has been tested for archival life by Wilhelm Imaging Research, Inc. which conducts accelerated light exposure and dark aging tests to determine the comparative life expectancy of inkjet and other digitally printed photographs, as well as that of traditional black-and-white and color photographs.

All prints are limited edition print runs, personally marked and signed by himself. Limited edition photographs will never be reproduced again except for appearance in press articles or a coffee table book authorized by the photographer.

For procurement of a limited edition print or more information:

Email: bhende@gmail.com

© Kunal Bhendé