This is my semi-serious biography, written in 1992 by Alessandro Menegazzo after two long days of interviews.

It narrates my beginnings as a photographer, first as an amateur then as a professional. It is especially targeted to those young people about to embark on this tough but beautiful profession. In order to break through, they will have to overcome great obstacles, because of the competitive nature of this field: nobody dreams of becoming a butcher or a pastry chef nowadays, but many want to become photographers. Nevertheless, they should remember that, before them, we've all had our fair share of experience, failure, suffering and gaffes.

A photographer of circumstance

by Alessandro Menegazzo

My mom owned a camera that I would often borrow. The brand was 'Pearl' but it definitely was not a pearl of a camera. I soon yearned to own a serious camera and so I spent all my savings on buying a Canon AE1. It was sturdy and reliable, with a good lens: it was a knock-out. It was like graduating from a bike to a car: a gulf between them. I quickly shot my way through the fist roll of film then I ran to the nearest print shop and bugged the owner until he gave me back my printed photos. It was right then that I decided to become a photographer.

Easy to say, but that decision was a bit a short of a miracle for me. I reached age 23 with a few confused ideas about life, after realizing that a degree in statistics was not for me, after a bit of politics and after much bullshitting. However, I had finally realized what I wanted to be and that was all that mattered. After a month, the darkroom no longer held any secrets from me and, with an Agfa kit, I learned how to develop my own positives that I would later print in Cibachrome. I now lived for photography and I wanted to be reciprocated: I expected photography to put bread on my table.

During 1977, I would make ends meet as an occasional photographer thanks to jobs I would get, mostly, through word of mouth. One morning, the usual friend's sister's friend let me know, via a few phone calls, that the local winery needed a picture of a wine bottle. Their catalogue, which was to be printed the next day, needed to be update and their usual photographer was unavailable. They needed someone to come in and save the day. I was taught to always take advantage of the opportunities that come my way so I told a few white lies and pretended to have shot as many wine bottles as Giorgio Morandi had painted in his still life paintings (since they would not have had enough time to check). The picture was then my problem.
I did not lose spirit and I thought: bottle=reflection, reflection=polarization. I bought two polarizing filters and a Kodak EPY  5x7" tungsten film. The resulting picture showed something that resembled more a green cardboard cut-out with a sticker on it, than a real bottle: it was flat with no highlights. Unfortunately, I didn't have time for further experimentation so I went to meet with my client pretending to radiate fearlessness.

The small, peaceful man smiled at me, without hiding the stress due to the urgency of the job. "Well... I'd say we've got it", he commented. "Of course, the photographer's hand is different, and you can tell, but we knew this from the start.... Plus, there's no doubt that this is a bottle... How much do you want for this shot?" I was very much aware (and felt guilty about it) of both the image's flatness and the client's urgency, so I decided to ask for 10,000 lire (about five dollars) which was pretty low even for 1977. "It's more than reasonable", said the man. So I went on for a good 10 minutes telling him, in many different ways and repeating myself to the point of obnoxious, that it was a promotional price (I was afraid I'd blown my cover of seasoned professional), that my normal rates were much higher, that I'd given them special treatment hoping to work together in the future but they shouldn't think they'd always be so fortunate, and so on.

For my client Ovomattino, I needed to photograph a hen hatching on some hay, on a white background, in my studio. It was not easy, like every project tackled without knowing how to. After being pecked many times and failing to get the hen out of its hiding place, we had to ask for the owner's help. Knowing her chicks, the lady soon recovered our fugitive and tied its legs together to keep it still. It resulted in our subject bearing a very eloquent expression, as you can see.