Alessandro Gerelli as seen by Simone Rossetto in Murano glass.
By Pete Vack
Photography by Alessandro Gerelli
Alessandro Gerelli: 140 articles, 3000 photos and 14 years with VeloceToday
In the summer of 1967, September 8th, to be exact, a 19 year-old college student by the name of Alessandro Gerelli was lucky enough to have obtained a pit pass to the Italian Grand Prix. Like today, pit passes were extremely difficult to obtain. But Gerelli was determined. He would not listen to the sound of Amon’s Ferrari from far behind the fences; he wanted desperately to be where the action was. In what must have been a passionately good letter, he wrote to the organizers and asked them if a student could obtain a pit pass. He would do no damage, he wrote, wouldn’t create problems, and maybe if he could just get a pass for the official test day, he could then take some photos. “The process worked,” says Alessandro, “and a very kind lady from the Monza organization called me, and said she had been touched by my letter.” The young Gerelli went to the Monza practice on Friday with a pit pass. He had to access a certain gate and mention the name of the lady who responded to his letter. “The miracle had been done,” recalled Gerelli.
His patience and fortitude resulted in catching a rare photo of Enzo Ferrari in the pits. Ferrari rarely attended races, even at Monza. Gerelli knew that Ferrari would often show up during practice for the Grand Prix so it was not a surprise. “But of course he was Ferrari and in any case the opportunity to see him and to take a picture of him was something exceptional for a young Ferrari lover like me,” said Gerelli.
Alessandro suddenly was in the midst of Ferraris and racing cars, and already owned a Fiat 600. (Since then, he has owned Abarths, Lancia, including a Delta Integrale 16v, and a Toyota MR2.) Yet like many urban Italian families in the 1960s, Alessandro’s parents did not own a car. “Therefore as a child growing up, cars were a new concept for me,” he recalled. He began to read Quattroroute and Auto Italiana and bought books about cars. “I became a car enthusiast, mostly of Ferraris. But I also dreamed of becoming a mechanical engineer, like Mauro Forghieri.”
Odds of becoming the next Forghieri were slim, however. “Thanks to a math teacher, my attitude became more realistic and I concentrated on math and computer science.” Eventually the college student and math major found a job as an IT manager for Philips and pursued his interest in flying, collecting Ferrari literature, photography and art from his home base in Bresso, near Milan.
A classic Gerelli shot that says volumes about the Italian passion for both food and automobiles. One of our favorites!
Alessandro must have been one of the first Italians to recognize the significance of the World Wide Web. “Because of my studies in computer science, I knew the Internet would be a great way to share information, but honestly, I didn’t think that it would all happen so quickly!”
In May of 2002, Alessandro submitted photos of his experiences at Monza 1967 to VeloceToday, and we published his first story. From then on, the photos and stories of Alessandro Gerelli have been a staple of VeloceToday, ranging from Cavallino in Florida to the Oldtimers Grand Prix in Germany, to the annual cars shows in Geneva and in 2003 was the first to report on the now-essential Retromobile event in Paris. He has reported on the Mille Miglia every year since 2004 and continues to do so.
A simple Gerelli shot of a Maserati…the right sun, the right angle, the right touch…not so simple after all.
From 2007 to today, Gerelli has posted over 140 articles; he is our most senior correspondent with the most stories submitted. We don’t have an accurate count of the number of his photos we have published, but it is likely to be around 3000. We owe him a great debt as well as a small fortune. It is our good fortune that Alessandro enjoys what he is doing and does it, like the writing on one of the Ferraris he photographed, “Just For Fun”.
Some detail shots require a bit of thought and attention. And then…
Although the technology has changed dramatically, Gerelli keeps up with the latest trends in digital imaging. In 1963, even then a car enthusiast, Gerelli attended the Salone dell’Auto di Torino and took a photo of a Ferrari 250LM and the photo was taken with an Agfa Silette 35mm slide film. Since then, both photographer and photography have come a long way. “I started to use digital cameras around 2000, but initially not for car pictures. Then finally in 2005, I moved completely to digital with Olympus machines.”
While Gerelli is an all-around photographer, he likes detail shots, particularly of Ferraris. Over the years he has specialized in this and in 2005 published a small hard bound book of his photos. Never for sale, it was given to his friends and titled Alessandro Gerelli, Le Mie Ferrari.
The cars of Ferrari have always provided ample opportunities for artistic detail photography; Clearly the overall beauty of a Ferrari is a sum of the details, something which Gerelli instinctively recognizes. His photos are never staged or photoshopped for effect, and always outside using existing light. A leaf in the intake of a silver 360, a reflection of a badge in the sun, the repetition of a line of similar models, all catch the eye and attention of our man from Bresso. “I try to give the viewer a detail with an original setting and present the sensation I had looking as what is sculpture rather than a car, and as such, needs to be appreciated not only as a whole, but even in its smallest details.”
Yes!
Almost nine years ago, we published a few of his images but none since we went to a larger format with much better size and resolution. We have arranged two separate salons of his work within four galleries; click on each to view. Part 1 will be presented this week, Part 2 next.