Kati Horna

Kati Horna (May 19, 1912 – October 19, 2000), born Katalin Deutsch, was a Hungarian-born Mexican photojournalist, surrealist photographer and teacher.

She was born in Budapest, at the time part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, lived in France, Germany, Spain, and later was naturalized Mexican.

Most of her work was considered lost during the Spanish Civil War.

She was one of the influential women photographers of her time.

Through her photographs she was able to change the way that people viewed war.

One way that Horna was able to do this was through the utilization of a strategy called "gendered witnessing".

Gendered witnessing consisted of putting a feminist view on the notion that war was a predominantly masculine thing.

Horna became a legendary photographer after taking on a woman's perspective of the war, she was able to focus on the behind-of-the-scenes, which led her to portraying the impact that war had on women and children.

One of her most striking images is the Tête de poupée (doll's head).

Horna worked for various magazines including Mujeres and S.NOB, in which she published a series of fétiches, but even her more commercial commissions often contained surreal touches

Kati Horna was born in 1912 to an upper-middle-class Jewish family in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during an unstable sociopolitical period.

As a result of the First World War, Budapest - where Horna grew up - suffered severe economic setbacks which continued in the years between the two World Wars.

Her father was a banker from the prosperous part of Buda.

When he died, photography offered Horna the means to earn a living and the chance to fulfill her political ideals.

The surrounding violence, danger and injustice of that time influenced her ideology profoundly.

As a teenager, Horna lived in Berlin, where she met Bertolt Brecht and was influenced by Bauhaus, Surrealism, and Constructivist artist Lajos Kassak, whose views on photography as an agent of social change aligned with Horna's views.

Another important influence on her personal ideology was Marxist theoretician Karl Korsch, who trained her in radical politics, which added to her love for narrative photography.

At the age of twenty, Horna became an apprentice in the workshop of photographer József Pecsi.

At this prestigious school in Budapest, she learned basic photographic techniques.

When Capa moved to Paris, she followed him in 1933, where she turned her attention to the life she saw around her in the streets and cafés of the French capital.

The series Flea Markets (1933) and Reportage dans les Cafés de Paris (1934) are from this period.

Besides photographing realistic scenes, she also ventured into more experimental work, closer to Surrealism.

Even though Horna gained much popularity, she preferred to stay out of the limelight and work for smaller organizations such as the magazine Umbral.

Her series for the French Agence Photo (1934) revealed her keen eye for irony and fun.

Capa favored working at the front lines of the war; capturing shots such as The Falling Soldier [1936].

Horna and Capa were part of the same left-wing political movement and photographed each other's portraits.

In 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, she moved to Barcelona and was commissioned by the Spanish Republican government and the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo to document the war as well as record everyday life of communities on the front lines, such as in Aragón, Valencia, Madrid, and Lérida.

She photographed elderly women, young children, babies and mothers, and was later considered visionary for her choice of subject matter.

Horna's images, published in anarchist newspapers, magazines and pamphlets, revealed the brutal effects of the war on civilians under siege.

This was a different perspective for a different kind of war: the first major European conflict not confined to the battlefield.

She was editor of the magazine Umbral, where she met her later husband José Horna, a craftsman and sculptor.

Some of her photos were used as posters for the Republican cause.

Horna also collaborated with other magazines, most of which were of anarchist ideology, such as Tiempos Nuevos, Libre-Studio, Mujeres Libres and Tierra y Libertad.

Her images of scenes from the civil war not only revealed her Republican sympathies, but also gained her almost legendary status.[where?]

With José Horna, Kati escaped to Paris in 1939 after being pushed out by the Spanish Fascist authorities.

Being appalled by the great amount of poverty that could be observed at the time, Horna's career took a new direction: While in Paris she was a reporter for Lutetia-Press.

Horna was also reunited with her friend Robert Capa, who inspired her not only for poetic photo narratives and staged shots, but also for her recurrent theme of masks and dolls.

She also met Robert Capa (then by the name Endre Friedmann) there, and the two photographers remained friends until Capa's death in 1954.

Some of the wars that Capa was able to capture included the Spanish Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

While Capa had his lens focused on the action-packed battlefront, the more reserved Kati took compassionate, visionary pictures of those affected by the war, capturing the resilience of women under siege.