By 1985, Newsweek was impressed enough with Gentile’s photographs to sign him as their Contract Photographer in Latin America and the Caribbean. Gentile eventually earned the title of Newsweek Photographer of the Year for his coverage of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Gentile spent seven years in Nicaragua, covering the country for Newsweek.

Out of those seven years came Gentile’s 1989 a book of photography, “Nicaragua,” which earned him the Oliver Robert Award of Excellence.

“America is my country,” Gentile says. “But I’ve fallen in love with another country - Nicaragua.”

While in Central America, Gentile met the woman who would eventually become his wife.

“We met in Cuba in 1991, and then didn’t see each other for years,” Esther Gentile says. “For me, it was always a dream. I always had a special feeling for Bill. When we did get together in 1997, it was like destiny.

While “Nicaragua” was being published, Gentile and a colleague, Joe Contreras, (currently Newsweek’s bureau chief in Miami), were sent to the Upper Huallaga Valley in Peru to cover a link between drug traffickers and the Shinning Path, a fanatic, Maoist guerrilla group.

Gentile and Contreras were captured after being given bad advice from local townspeople that the next town over was safe. It wasn’t. As Gentile and Contreras entered the town, their car was surrounded by a group of drug traffickers, all drunk, who thought they were not really journalists, but American CIA or DEA.

“These guys grabbed us, tied our hands and took us across the river, where they handed us over to the guerillas,” Gentile says.

From his time in captivity, the renowned photographer still carries with him the image of the guerillas eating breakfast.

“At breakfast, no one would talk,” Gentile says. “They looked like robots, it was really quite frightening. It was just how programmed they were. It was a total lack of humanity, oppression at the highest degree.”

They were eventually released when Contreras convinced the Shining Path’s regional leader to let them go.

“[Our captors] came to our little cell where we were being kept and said we could go. They took us through the jungle and back to the little town where we had been captured. We saw the same guys who had nabbed us, and when they saw us, they looked like they were seeing ghosts.”