AP Photographer Kathy Willens Retires, Reflects On Career
Kathy Willens / AP Photo
World heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali has his headgear adjusted by trainer Chris Dundee, in Miami Beach on Dec. 21, 1977.
When Kathy Willens graduated from college, she was mostly resigned to becoming a starving artist. Instead, she became a photographer, and worked for the Associated Press for nearly 45 years, winning multiple awards for her coverage of breaking and general news, features, sports, fashion, and celebrities.
When Willens started, there were very few women photojournalists working alongside her, and the entire industry was an analog one — with photographers developing their own film and writing their captions on typewriters. At the end of Willens’s career, 95,000 of her images were on the AP Images website.
We caught up with Willens two weeks into her retirement (“I haven’t had a moment to relax!” she said) to talk about sports photography, long lenses, and what it was