lit a candle 9h agoFollowed his work for years. The way he captured light on water was unlike anything else.
Their story
Carlo Borlenghi was born on 10 July 1956 in Bellano, a small town on the eastern shore of Lake Como, to Andrea and Rosa (Conforti) Borlenghi. His father ran a multigenerational plumbing business and hoped his son would take it over. Carlo chose cameras instead. As a young man he…
Carlo Borlenghi was born on 10 July 1956 in Bellano, a small town on the eastern shore of Lake Como, to Andrea and Rosa (Conforti) Borlenghi. His father ran a multigenerational plumbing business and hoped his son would take it over. Carlo chose cameras instead. As a young man he photographed friends racing dinghies on the lake and sold prints to the crews. A journalist who saw those images brought him to the Milan editors of Uomo Mare (the boating offshoot of Uomo Vogue). That introduction opened the international circuit.
In 1979 he went to sea for the first time on assignment at Alassio Week. The water was rough and, famously, he could not swim. He later told Giornale della Vela that fear sharpened his eye: he believed he emphasized the sea differently from photographers who were comfortable in the water. Around 1980 his photograph of Pasquale Landolfi's yacht Brava, heeled over with the owner half submerged, became an Italian sailing icon and a career landmark.
In 1983, at 27, he joined Italy's pioneering Azzurra America's Cup challenge in Newport, Rhode Island. From that campaign onward he covered every America's Cup for more than four decades, photographing Italia in Fremantle (1987), Il Moro di Venezia in San Diego (1992), multiple Luna Rossa campaigns for Patrizio Bertelli's Prada-backed Italian challenges from Auckland 2000 through Barcelona 2024, serving as Official Photographer of the America's Cup event in Valencia in 2007, and working with Alinghi in 2010. Colleagues said he read a racecourse like a tactician, anticipating starts, spray, and the glance that meant victory or defeat.
His work ranged far beyond the Cup. He documented Whitbread and Volvo Ocean Races, Rolex sailing events worldwide, Giovanni Soldini's ocean campaigns, Grant Dalton's Club Med entry in The Race (2000), Barcolana and Giraglia starts, Olympic and grand prix sailing, and even Class 1 offshore powerboat racing in the mid-2000s. In 1989 he founded the Sea&See Italia agency (later linked to Mediatree). With his wife Alessandra Tanghetti, whom he married in 1994, he ran Studio Borlenghi from Bellano, training photographers while refusing to make carbon copies of himself.
Recognition included the Omega Award for best sports photographer, the Grand Prix de l'Image Course au Large at the Paris boat show (2007), and a plaque from Italian President Giorgio Napolitano for long service to sailing. He exhibited in Paris (including a Louis Vuitton space show, Winds and Sails), Milan, and elsewhere. During the Covid pandemic he set up a temporary studio in Bellano, photographed about 1,800 townspeople, and published the portrait book Il Ritratto di Bellano (2022).
Borlenghi died on 3 August 2026 at a hospital in Lecco after an abdominal infection, his wife said. Early Italian reports described a sudden overnight crisis in Bellano after he had felt unwell the evening before. He was 70. His funeral was held on 5 August 2026 at the Church of Saints Nazzaro and Celso in Bellano. He is survived by Alessandra, his mother, and his brother Luciano. America's Cup organizers, Emirates Team New Zealand, Luna Rossa circles, and photographers from Sharon Green to Andrea Francolini mourned a colleague whose frames had become the sport's visual memory.
This memorial is for Carlo Borlenghi (1956-2026), the Italian America's Cup and Rolex sailing photographer of Studio Borlenghi and Sea&See Italia. It is not for Angel Borlenghi, the Argentine politician, and not for other people or Commons files sharing the Borlenghi surname.
Biography adapted from NYT obit (DNYUZ mirrors) 2026-08-21; America's Cup tribute 2026-08-03; Giornale della Vela; Powerboat News; Scuttlebutt; Float Magazin; carloborlenghi.com; Wikidata Q112535825..
In their own words
“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.”
Giornale della Vela interview, reprinted in farewell coverage.
“I tackle it fully aware of my limitations, knowing that I can't fall into the water. But that's not so unusual. I've met many sailors who can't swim.”
Same Giornale della Vela interview tradition / Float Magazin paraphrase from Vela.
“Of all the seas I've seen, the Tyrrhenian Sea is the one that intrigues me the most, because of its vastness and its light.”
Giornale della Vela.
“There are true masterpieces of nature in the Tyrrhenian Sea. You don't have to do anything. You just have to be there and look at them.”
Float Magazin / Giornale della Vela.
“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.”
Colleague Magnus Wheatley, America's Cup tribute, August 2026.
“Carlo just got better and better. Suddenly he was producing art, when the rest of us were just illustrating.”
Photographer Guy Gurney, quoted in the New York Times.
Well said. His work will outlive all of us.