Kartiki Gonsalves is a Sony Artisan, one of the first women selected in India as a Sony Imaging Ambassador for the Sony Alpha series as a natural history and social documentary photographer & filmmaker. She is an Indian Natural History, Social Documentary photojournalist/ filmmaker currently based out of the Nilgiris and Bombay in India. Her work has two foci. One is environment, nature and wildlife, where she seeks to raise awareness about marvelous diversity of nature and wildlife and the importance of conservation. The other is cultures, communities and their connections. An avid traveller & explorer, her work primarily revolves around nature, cultures, communities, animals, and the environment and how they are all intertwined.
She travels extensively searching for photos, stories and videos to raise awareness about cultures, communities, animals, and the environment. Capturing unique aspects of different cultures around the world is something that she loves. Though she also seeks capture the oneness of mankind. Her primary focus is on the photograph and filming of wildlife and diverse cultures. She seeks to make a direct impact on the environmental and cultural issues that define our times.
She focuses primarily on stories, photos and videos to raise awareness about conservation of biodiversity and on forgotten communities, their lives and their progress. She is currently working on a three long term projects: a project on wild cats that inhabit the mountainous higher altitudes of the Western Ghats. She recently completed an assignment in a remote village in central India, photographing and documenting the lives, stories and art of local traditional artists of the Adivasi and the Biel communities. Post which she traveled and worked on a photo feature and footage documenting the life in the cold high deserts of the Indo-Chinese border in the Greater Himalayas.
Her most recent film is releasing on Netflix worldwide in December of 2022 called ‘The Elephant Whisperers’ which follows an indigenous couple as they fall in love with Raghu, an orphaned elephant given into their care, and tirelessly work to ensure his survival. The film highlights the beauty of the wild spaces in South India and the people and animals who share this space.
She continues to document our natural world to better understand the profound connection that we share with it. She brings awareness to the challenges we face, but also focuses on solutions with her projects and shows success stories where conservation is working. She uses the media of photography and film to connect people to the natural world. Her work has been published in various national and international photography, travel and wildlife magazines, books. She has also filmed several advertisements, documentaries & reality series.
She travels extensively searching for photos, stories and videos to raise awareness about cultures, communities, animals, and the environment. Capturing unique aspects of different cultures around the world is something that she loves. She seeks to make a direct impact on the environmental and cultural issues that define our times.
She works with natural light which requires a lot of patience and research, but when you learn how to use it the right way it adds that extra “magic” as she calls it and enhances the images in the most beautiful way. She photographs nature in an artistic way, focusing on details, light, textures, colours and moods, and using creative camera techniques to best capture the beauty of a scene. The beauty of nature, emotion and natural light are a great source of inspiration to her. She strives to evoke emotion in the viewer rather than just capturing the image.
After all her traveling, the people she has met, her experiences along the way, she strongly believes that there are no borders. As she says that we all live under the same sun and sleep under the same moon and walk on the same soil. We are all are part of the same gigantic intricate web of life. It is very clear that all living things around us are connected whether we’d like to understand it or not. Does it matter what you’re wearing, what you look like, where you come from and what you do or how much money one has? No, it does not. The connections, happiness, laughter, love, pain, struggle and loss are all universal. She says "There is such intense beauty in diversity" and after a lot of thought, traveling to remote places and meeting people from all walks of life, she has come to the conclusion that it is empathy that connects us all together. There is a oneness and that she seeks to portray in her work as a photographer and filmmaker. She conveys a sense of her experiences and emotions, drawing the viewer much deeper into her work. Her ultimate goal is to create a lifetime body of beautiful work that has deep meaning and that carries a message of hope for preserving what we do have which will make a difference for the generations to come.
