Kati Horna | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Katalin Deutsch (1912-05-19)May 19, 1912 |
| Died | October 19, 2000(2000-10-19) (aged 88) |
| Notable work | Umbral, Nosotros |
| Style | photojournalism, Surrealist |
| Spouse | José Horna |
Kati Horna (May 19, 1912 – October 19, 2000), bornKatalin Deutsch,[1][2] was a Hungarian-born Mexican photojournalist,surrealist photographer and teacher. She was born inBudapest, at the time part of theAustrian-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 theTête de poupée (doll's head).[4] Horna worked for various magazines includingMujeres andS.NOB, in which she published a series offétiches, but even her more commercial commissions often contained surreal touches[4]
Kati Horna was born in 1912 to an upper-middle-class Jewish family in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during an unstable sociopolitical period.[5] 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.[6]
Her father was a banker from the prosperous part ofBuda.[7] When he died, photography offered Horna the means to earn a living and the chance to fulfill her political ideals.[8] The surrounding violence, danger and injustice of that time influenced her ideology profoundly.
As a teenager, Horna lived in Berlin, where she metBertolt Brecht and was influenced byBauhaus, Surrealism, andConstructivist artistLajos Kassak, whose views on photography as an agent of social change aligned with Horna's views. Another important influence on her personal ideology wasMarxist theoreticianKarl Korsch, who trained her in radical politics, which added to her love fornarrative photography.[9][10]
At the age of twenty, Horna became an apprentice in the workshop of photographerJózsef Pecsi. At this prestigious school in Budapest, she learned basicphotographic techniques.[7] She also metRobert Capa (then by the name Endre Friedmann) there, and the two photographers remained friends until Capa's death in 1954.[7] Some of the wars that Capa was able to capture included theSpanish Civil War and theSecond Sino-Japanese War.[11] 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.[12] Capa favored working at the front lines of the war; capturing shots such asThe Falling Soldier [1936].[13] Horna and Capa were part of the same left-wing political movement and photographed each other's portraits.[14]
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. Her series for the FrenchAgence Photo (1934) revealed her keen eye for irony and fun.[13][8] The seriesFlea Markets (1933) andReportage dans les Cafés de Paris (1934) are from this period. Besides photographing realistic scenes, she also ventured into more experimental work, closer toSurrealism. Even though Horna gained much popularity, she preferred to stay out of the limelight and work for smaller organizations such as the magazineUmbral.[11][15]
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 inanarchist 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 magazineUmbral, where she met her later husbandJosé 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 asTiempos Nuevos,Libre-Studio,Mujeres Libres andTierra 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]
With José Horna, Kati escaped to Paris in 1939 after being pushed out by theSpanish 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 theNazi 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 andLeonora 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 capturesRemedios Varo, wearing one of her masks.[5][10]
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 asTodo (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 likeTíteres en la penitenciaría [Puppets in the Penitentiary] or portraits ofAlfonso Reyes in his library. In 1958, Horna was the chief photo editor ofMujeres magazine. During the second half of the 20th century she also did sporadic commissions forRevista 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 likeLuis Barragán, Carlos Lazo andRicardo 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 theMuseo Nacional de Antropología [National Museum of Anthropology], theCiudad Universitaria [University Campus], and theBiblioteca Nacional [National Library]. In 1967, Kati Horna took photos of the pre-Olympic games for the architectPedro 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 theEscuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, theAcademia de San Carlos and theUniversidad Iberoamericana. Some of her most well-known works includeWhat Goes in the Basket (1939),La Castañeda (1945),Fetiches (1962),Ode to Necrophilia (1962),Sucedió en Coyoacán (1962),Mujer y Máscara (1963), andUna 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. Kati Horna's archive and the copyrights to her work are handled by theArchivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna in Mexico City.
During the Spanish Civil War, Horna had used herRolleiflex camera in Barcelona and other places inCatalonia for the public relations office of theanarchist 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 theSpanish Fascist movement. At the end of the civil war, her photographs along with other documents were shipped in wooden crates to theInternational Institute of Social History (IISH) inAmsterdam. Overlooked and forgotten in the crates, her and fellow photographerMargaret 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 thePhotoEspaña 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 acollectivised barbershop, of a former church converted into a carpentry workshop and of trenches on the front inAragón. 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."
