24 Facts About Kati Horna

Kati Horna, born Katalin Deutsch, was a Hungarian-born Mexican photojournalist, surrealist photographer and teacher.

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

Kati Horna was one of the influential women photographers of her time.

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

Kati Horna became a legendary photographer after taking on a woman's perspective of the war.

Kati Horna was able to focus on the behind-of-the-scenes, which led her to portraying the impact that war had on women and children.

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

Kati Horna's father was a banker from the prosperous part of Buda.

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

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

Kati Horna met Robert Capa there, and the two photographers remained friends until Capa's death in 1954.

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

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

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

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

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

Kati Horna arrived in Mexico in October 1939, at the age of 27.

In 1958, Kati Horna was the chief photo editor of Mujeres magazine.

Kati Horna carried out more experimental projects that bear the imprint of surrealism.

Architecture was another field that Kati Horna explored with interest.

Kati Horna collaborated with various architects like Luis Barragan, Carlos Lazo and Ricardo Legorreta, and documented buildings with historical value in order to provide a register of their conditions.

Kati Horna published photos of recently inaugurated public buildings, like the Museo Nacional de Antropologia [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 Ramirez Vazquez.

Kati Horna's work has been included in numerous exhibitions in Mexico, Spain, and other countries.