Fotógrafa nacida en Hungría en 1912.

En 1933 comenzó a trabajar como

fotógrafa en París y cinco años más tarde viajó a Barcelona donde trabajó como
jefa de redacción de la revista Umbral. El mismo año fue comisionada por el
gobierno de la República Española para realizar un álbum sobre la guerra civil y
fotoreportajes que sirvieron como propaganda exterior.
En 1939 llegó con su esposo José Horna a México, estableció amistad con el
grupo de artistas surrealistas y retrató a las figuras más destacadas de los círculos
del arte y la farándula. Colaboró en diversas revistas mexicanas como Nosotros,
Mujeres, y Perfumes y modas. En 1962 participó en la formación de la
revista S.nob, junto con Leonora Carrington, Jorge Ibargüengoitia y Alberto
Gironella, bajo la dirección de Salvador Elizondo y Juan García Ponce. Para esta
revista realizó series fotográficas como Fetiches, y cuentos fantásticos en
secuencia fotográfica como Oda a la necrofília,
Sacramentalia y Vampiro. Horna tuvo una gran labor educativa, impartió clases
en la Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas y tuvo un taller abierto en la Academia
de San Carlos desde 1973; donde dio clases a fotógrafos como Flor Garduño,
Elsa Chabaud, Manuel Monroy, Estanislao Ortíz y Sergio Carlos Rey, entre
otros. Fue también maestra de fotografía en la Universidad Iberoamericana.
Se le asocia con la fotografía surrealista, sin embargo, al preguntarle si se
consideraba una artista surrealista ella contestó que no, que probablemente la
asociaban al movimiento por haber sido amiga de artistas surrealistas mexicanos,
pero que en la época ella ni siquiera sabía lo que esa palabra significaba (Horna
en Lápiz I, 2001). Muchas de sus fotografías son acercamientos de rostros o
ángulos de edificios en ocasiones irreconocibles, a veces notamos que sus
imágenes están fuera de foco intencionalmente para producir un efecto de
remembranza sin sensación completa de reconocimiento. En sus retratos, el
rostro del modelo es el punto central y el resto de la imagen proporciona un
ambiente que enfatiza el carácter del personaje. Kati Horna murió en la ciudad de
México el año 2000.
Kati Horna (May 19, 1912 – October 19, 2000), born Katalin Deutsch,[1][2] 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.
[3]
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).[4] 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[4]
Spanish Civil War[edit]
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.[8] 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.[16] 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.[17] Her images of scenes from the
civil war not only revealed her Republican sympathies, but also gained her almost legendary
status.[where?][4]
France[edit]
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.
[18]

During the Nazi occupation of France, Kati and José were married and later sought refuge in
Mexico, where she met other artists, who were also fleeing from war-torn Europe: Remedios
Varo, Benjamín Péret, Emeric Chiki Weisz, Edward James, Tina Modotti and Leonora
Carrington. Kati Horna and this group of artists in exile became a tight knit circle of friends. The
friendship between Kati Horna, Remedios Varo, and Leonora Carrington would later be
showcased in the 2010 exhibition Surreal Friends.[1] One of Kati Horna's most well-known
photographs captures Remedios Varo, wearing one of her masks.[5][10]
Mexico[edit]
Horna arrived in Mexico in October 1939, at the age of 27. Mexico became for her a
"motherland", and she confessed her patriotism only for this country. Living in Mexico for the
rest of her life, she was a contributor to magazines such
as Todo (1939), Mapa (1940), Enigma (1941), El arte de cocinar (1944), Seguro Social (1944),
among others.[19]
Nosotros magazine hired her as a full-time photographer in 1944. There she published series
like Títeres en la penitenciaría [Puppets in the Penitentiary] or portraits of Alfonso Reyes in his
library. In 1958, Horna was the chief photo editor of Mujeres magazine. During the second half
of the 20th century she also did sporadic commissions for Revista de la Universidad de
México, Mexico This Month, Tiempo, S.nob, Mujer de Hoy, Mujeres: Expresión Femenina,
Revista de Revistas, Diseño, Vanidades, Arquitectura, Arquitectos de México, Obras.[20] She
also carried out more experimental projects that bear the imprint of surrealism.[21][22]
Architecture was another field that Kati Horna explored with interest. She collaborated with
various architects like Luis Barragán, Carlos Lazo and Ricardo Legorreta, and documented
buildings with historical value in order to provide a register of their conditions. Horna also
published photos of recently inaugurated public buildings, like the Museo Nacional de
Antropología [National Museum of Anthropology], the Ciudad Universitaria [University
Campus], and the Biblioteca Nacional [National Library]. In 1967, Kati Horna took photos of the
pre-Olympic games for the architect Pedro Ramírez Vázquez. Horna's interest in architectural
photography also expanded into capturing deteriorated and dilapidated buildings. This side of
her photography corresponds to her Surrealist connections, as the subjects captured in these
pieces allow for multiple interpretations.[23]
Between 1958 and 1963, was also a professor at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas,
the Academia de San Carlos and the Universidad Iberoamericana. Some of her most well-
known works include What Goes in the Basket (1939), La
Castañeda (1945), Fetiches (1962), Ode to Necrophilia (1962), Sucedió en
Coyoacán (1962), Mujer y Máscara (1963), and Una Noche en el Sanatorio de
Muñecas (1963).
Kati Horna died in October 2000. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions in
Mexico, Spain, and other countries.
During the Spanish Civil War, Horna had used her Rolleiflex camera in Barcelona and other
places in Catalonia for the public relations office of the anarchist movement CNT-FAI
(Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and Federación Anarquista Ibérica). These were used by
the propaganda commissariat of the CNT-FAI in an effort to encourage morale and action in
their fight against the Spanish Fascist movement. At the end of the civil war, her photographs
along with other documents were shipped in wooden crates to the International Institute of
Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. Overlooked and forgotten in the crates, her and fellow
photographer Margaret Michaelis's photographs were only rediscovered after 80 years by
Spanish art historian and curator Almudena Rubio. Most of these pictures had never been
published and were presented for the first time in an exhibition in Madrid during
the PhotoEspaña festival in June 2022.
Horna's pictures from the forgotten crates include scenes of the human conditions in a prison,
of people having free haircuts at a collectivised barbershop, of a former church converted into
a carpentry workshop and of trenches on the front in Aragón. On the occasion of the Madrid
exhibition, Rubio was quoted:[24]
"The legacy of the work of Michaelis and Horna is unique, precisely because it shows us the
rearguard revolutionary experience, neglected by official historiography, that was instigated by
the anarchists of the CNT-FAI. At the same time, it allows us to reconstruct in more detail the
life of the two photographers during the civil war, and better to appreciate their work in
antifascist Spain."