Kati Horna

(Hungary-Mexico, 12/05/1912 - 19/10/2000)

Born Katalin Deutsch in 1912 to an affluent Jewish family, Horna came of age during a period of sociopolitical upheaval and the artistic experimentation of European avant-garde movements that would profoundly shape her life and work. Her multiple experiences of exile shaped her humanistic vision and allowed her work to translate across languages and borders and transcend the boundaries between artistic expression and activism.

In 1932, Horna became an apprentice to the renowned modernist photographer Józef Pésci in his Budapest studio. At this time, she was also witnessing the rise of fascism firsthand and joined leftist intellectual circles, becoming deeply committed to anti-fascist causes.

Following the Nazi party’s rise to power in 1933, Horna fled to Paris where she began producing photographs that combined dreamlike juxtapositions and unconventional angles with social critiques by centering marginalised and dispossessed communities. Fuelled by her interest in the psychological dimensions of everyday life, these images culminate in an empathetic vision grounded in both political conviction and poetic imagination.

Commissioned by the Spanish anarchist press in 1937, Horna produced images for the Republican cause of the Spanish Civil War that departed from the propagandistic tone typical of wartime photography and, instead of focusing on combat or heroism, she resisted the spectacle of violence in favour of the realities of conflict, including women working in communal kitchens, children in bomb shelters and soldiers at rest.

In 1939, Horna was again forced into exile following the Republican defeat and briefly returned to Paris before fleeing to Mexico with her husband, the Spanish artist José Horna. In Mexico City, Horna embraced surrealism more explicitly, exploring themes of identity, memory, exile and displacement. Through meticulously staged compositions and the use of symbolic objects, she constructed dreamlike narratives that reflected both her personal history and broader questions of exile and belonging.

Horna made significant contributions to Mexico’s artistic milieu and worked as a photojournalist for a range of publications, including Mujeres: Expresión Femenina and S.Nob, while also teaching photography at the Universidad Iberoamericana. Her influence on subsequent generations of Mexican photographers was profound, fostering a sensibility that valued psychological depth and formal experimentation over mere documentation.

Horna’s legacy has only recently been recognised within the broader canon of twentieth-century photography. Resisting easy categorisation, her work moves fluidly between documentary and surrealism, personal memory and collective history. As both witness and dreamer, Horna created images that confront the trauma of displacement with an enduring faith in the power of imagination. Her oeuvre, shaped by exile yet animated by empathy, stands as a testament to the resilience of artistic vision in the face of historical catastrophe. 

Image: Kati Horna, Bottle (1962, printed c.1980). Gelatin silver print, 23.7 x 16.5 cm. Museum of Modern Art, U.S.A.