Kathy Willens, trailblazing AP photographer known for sports shots, dies at 74

NEW YORK (AP) — Pioneering photojournalist Kathy Willens, who helped shape the role of women in photojournalism over an illustrious nearly 45-year career at The Associated Press, passed away on Tuesday. She was 74.

Willens died at her Brooklyn home due to ovarian cancer, which was diagnosed shortly after her retirement in 2021, according to her nephew, Ben Willens.

A trailblazing and dedicated figure in photojournalism, Willens was a giving colleague but a fierce competitor. She was one of the first female staff photographers at the AP, capturing over 90,000 images, including moments of presidents, Pope John Paul II, protests, wars, sports events, and human tragedies.

“A stroll through her archive is a stroll through history,” said J. David Ake, former AP Director of Photography, who edited many of her photos in the last two decades of her career. Willens was known for taking numerous frames, making it a challenge to edit her work. “But in those images, there was always a gem. Something she saw, that no one around her did,” Ake remarked by email.

Willens specialized in sports photography and gained such recognition that the New York Yankees honored her on the field when she retired. During a pre-game ceremony, team manager Aaron Boone presented her with a framed print, signed by former pitcher David Cone, of her photo capturing Cone after his perfect game in 1999.

Her journey began in the mid-1970s, a period when women were rare in the photojournalism field. “When covering sports, I was almost always the only female on the field,” Willens told Buzzfeed News in 2021. “There were no role models for me.”

Willens developed her love for cameras from her father, Lionel, a jewelry store owner and hobbyist photographer who maintained a darkroom in their home near Detroit. Her mother, Gertrude, was a dental hygienist. The family sometimes gathered to view slides from vacations, often interspersed with photos of molars, her nephew Ben Willens recalled.

Willens launched her professional career in 1974 as a freelancer for suburban Detroit newspapers. She soon became a photo lab technician and then a staff photographer at The Miami News. Her talent quickly earned her front-page features and other prominent positions, leading to her hiring by the AP in 1976.

Based in Miami, Willens covered significant events such as the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when nearly 125,000 Cubans arrived in the U.S. over six months, and the deadly riots following the acquittal of four police officers charged with killing Black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie.

Her assignments included photographing Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential campaign, George H.W. Bush surf-fishing soon after becoming president in 1988, and Queen Elizabeth II’s visit to the Bahamas in 1977. A notable sports image from that period included then-world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali at a Miami Beach boxing gym.

“For me, sports has the ability to capture these moments of extreme emotion,” Willens told Buzzfeed. “The joy of it, it’s right there in front of you all the time.”

Throughout her career, Willens covered six Olympics, 11 Super Bowls, numerous NBA finals, World Series, and other championships. A photo of tennis legend Billie Jean King, taken by Willens in 1977, graced the cover of King’s 2021 autobiography “All In,” a point of personal pride for Willens.

Willens was also devoted to capturing the stories of Florida’s Haitian and Cuban immigrants, work that featured in an exhibition at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in 2004.

After moving to AP’s New York headquarters in 1993, she was sent to cover the civil war in Somalia. Some of her contemporaries were captured or killed while working in the country, a factor that, upon her return to New York, led Willens to focus more on news and sports closer to home.

In New York, Willens became known for her determination and skill in getting the perfect shot. “She just would not be denied a picture. And her photography was just simple and precise, but really exquisite, at the same time,” said Peter Morgan, AP business photo editor. “Sometimes you had to look at her pictures for an extra second to really get them. But once you saw them, you got how brilliant they were.”

Among her varied projects, Willens undertook an eight-month documentary photo series on mothers in New York state prisons. Even during the last six months of her career, she committed herself to a challenging project about a high school for struggling students, although the endeavor ultimately proved impossible.

Willens earned numerous journalism awards, including an Associated Press Managing Editors Award for Reportorial Excellence and multiple wins in the Baseball Hall of Fame and Pro Football Hall of Fame photo competitions.

In addition to her work at AP, Willens taught photojournalism as an adjunct professor at New York University for many years. She continued to share her expertise, meeting with an acquaintance to impart her knowledge just a few months ago, her nephew revealed.

Willens was also an avid birder, often photographing her finds in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Her nephew plans to hold a memorial service there.

Source: Associated Press, Buzzfeed News