A pathbreaking photojournalist who helped cement women’s place behind the lens during her nearly 45-years career at The Associated Press has died.
FILE - Waves splash President-elect George Bush as he casts a line while surf-fishing in Gulf Stream, Fla., Nov. 12, 1988, shortly after winning the 1988 Presidential election. – Kathy Willens, a pathbreaking photojournalist who helped cement women's place behind the lens everywhere from the Super Bowl to war-torn Somalia during her nearly 45-year career at The Associated Press, died Tuesday. She was 74., said her nephew Ben Willens.
Specializing in sports, Willens became a photographer of such stature that the New York Yankees paid tribute to her on the field when she retired. In a pre-game ceremony, team manager Aaron Boone gave her a framed print, signed by former pitcher David Cone, of her own photo of him after he threw a perfect game in 1999.
Kathy Willens got her professional start as a freelancer for suburban Detroit newspapers in 1974. She soon landed a job at the now-gone The Miami News as a photo lab technician, then as a staff photographer, racking up front-page and other prominent pictures. The AP hired her in 1976. “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.”
After transferring to AP's New York headquarters in 1993, she was dispatched to Somalia in the throes of its civil war. Some of Willens' fellow photojournalists were captured and killed covering the country around that time, and Willens told Buzzfeed that after returning to New York, she decided she wanted to shoot more news and sports closer to home.
“She was just really good at finding the right moment,” he said."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.”
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