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Remembering Kathy Willens
17 July 2024
Kathy Willens, a pathbreaking photojournalist for the Associated Press at a time when women were not seen behind the camera, died Tuesday from ovarian cancer, diagnosed shortly after her 2021 retirement. She was 74.
Her mother was a dental hygienist and her father a jewelry store owner who dabbled in photography. He had a darkroom in their Detroit-area home where Willens was introduced to the craft that would define her life.
Willens began her career as a freelancer for suburban Detroit newspapers in 1974. She quickly got a job at the The Miami News as a photo lab technician, then as a staff photographer. Her work caught the attention of the Associated Press, which hired her in 1976.
Among her first assignments was the 1980 Mariel boatlift, when 125,000 Cubans emigrated to the U.S. in six months, and the aftermath of deadly rioting after the acquittal of four police officers charged with fatally beating a Black insurance executive.
'There were no role models for me.'
She photographed Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign, George H.W. Bush fishing in the surf after his own election eight years later and Queen Elizabeth II visiting the Bahamas in 1977.
She also captured then-world heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali at a Miami Beach boxing gym. Sports would come to hold a particular fascination for her.
"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."
During her career, she covered six Olympics, 11 Super Bowls and even more NBA finals, World Series and other championships. She was particularly proud of her 1977 photo of tennis trailblazer Billie Jean King, which graced the cover of King's 2021 autobiography All In.
"When covering sports, I was almost always the only female on the field," Willens recalled in 2021. "There were no role models for me."
Working out of New York in 1993, she covered Somalia during its civil war. Some of her fellow photojournalists were captured and killed covering that story and Willens decided to shoot more news and sports closer to home.
She took on projects like an eight-month-long documentary photo series on mothers in New York state prisons. And at the end of her career, she tried to document life in a high school for struggling students, which ultimately proved impossible.
Her awards include 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.
She also taught photojournalism as an adjunct professor at New York University.