Carlo Borlenghi died in the night between 2 and 3 August at Bellano, on the eastern shore of Lake Como. He was 70. He was born in the same town in 1956, and the funeral was held there on 5 August. No cause has been made public.
For four decades his pictures were how the rest of us saw sailing. The bow burying itself, the spray going up in a wall, the helmsman's face a half-second before the mark — those frames were usually his, whether they ran in a yacht club yearbook or on the front of an America's Cup press release.
The fear
He never learned to swim. ANSA, Sky TG24, Il Giornale della Vela and The Foil all carry the same detail, and it explains his pictures better than any equipment list. He worked from helicopters, from chase boats, from RIBs, from the rail of the racing boats themselves, and if any of it had gone wrong he could not have swum away from it.
He said as much himself, to Il Giornale della Vela.
Carlo Borlenghi:“I was worried, but at the same time I was also very excited and fascinated. I believe that in my photographs, I'm able to emphasize the sea in a way that's different from many others, precisely because I fear it.
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That is a working method. The fear kept the sea in his pictures as a force with weight and intent, something the boat has to survive. It also sent him into the water: Il Giornale della Vela credits him with underwater shooting techniques that a later generation of marine photographers simply copied.
Newport, 1983
He was 27 when he was made official photographer of Azzurra, Italy's first America's Cup challenge, at Newport, Rhode Island. He shot every edition of the Cup after that, through Barcelona in 2024 — Italia at Fremantle, Il Moro di Venezia at San Diego, then Luna Rossa across its campaigns, and Alinghi on the defence side.
Magnus Wheatley, writing the official America's Cup tribute, credited the knowledge behind the lens.
Magnus Wheatley, americascup.com:“What made Carlo exceptional was not simply technical brilliance, but an instinctive and deep-rooted understanding of sailboat racing itself. He knew where the pressure would build on a start line, when the spray would explode from a bow, when a helmsman's glance revealed victory or defeat.
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The rest of the calendar was just as fixed. He was the official photographer of the Rolex sailing events — the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup, the Rolex Swan Cup, the Giraglia, the Middle Sea Race, the Sydney Hobart — and he shot the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda's regattas at Porto Cervo for more than forty years. He covered the Barcolana at Trieste for thirty. He went round the world with the Whitbread and the Volvo Ocean Race. He followed Giovanni Soldini's boats from 1994 onwards, and he was still taking on new subjects at the end: the E1 electric foiling series, a class of boat that did not exist when he started.
There was commercial work behind the racing, too, including yard photography for Heesen Yachts, whose statement called him "the maestro". He founded the agency Sea&See in 1989. The awards came steadily: the Grand Prix Professional de la Photo de Mer in Paris in 1986, the Omega award for Italy's best sports photographer in 2003, the Grand Prix de l'Image Course au Large in 2007, and in the same year a plaque from President Giorgio Napolitano, "for the many years of intense activity on behalf of the world of sailing".
Trieste, and the rest of it
The tributes that landed hardest came from people who had stood next to him on a dock. Mitja Gialuz, president of the club that runs the Barcolana, told Il Piccolo that the news left them shaken and disbelieving, and that Borlenghi loved the city's light — he used to say Trieste was the only northern city on the Mediterranean. Furio Benussi, who has won that race more than once, said the images remain and that they help everyone remember. Benussi also recalled 2003, the year a sponsor pulled out and Borlenghi simply waived his fee.
Freddie Carr, who sailed with Luna Rossa from 2011 to 2013, told The Foil that as soon as you met him he took you into the family. Andy Rice, who used to drive the media RIB, said he learned a great deal from putting a boat exactly where Carlo needed it.
Sharon Green, a marine photographer herself, put it in a line: he changed the way everyone saw sailing.
He is survived by his wife, Alessandra. The regattas he made his life's subject are on the calendar again next month, and someone else will shoot them.
The photograph shows Bellano on Lake Como, the town where Carlo Borlenghi was born and where he died.
Photo: Tournasol7 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
