Kati Horna Hungary, 1912-2000

Kati Horna used photography as a tool for both politics and a source of personal reflection and creative renewal. As a young woman in interwar Europe, she became a photographer during a period of accelerated expansion of the illustrated press and was able to seize new opportunities for mobility and political engagement afforded to women by the photographic camera.

 

In Mexico, Kati Horna was active in several artistic and intellectual circles. Her close friendships with artists such as Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, and Mathias Goeritz led to daring collaborations and public interventions in the context of the so-called “Generación de la Ruptura” (Breakaway Generation), which challenged the dominant muralist tradition in Mexico.  Among the best-known are Horna’s collaboration with the Surrealist journal S.NOB and her involvement with the artist collective “Los Hartos.” In parallel to her photographic practice, Kati Horna’s teaching positions at the Universidad Iberoamericana and the Academia de San Carlos cemented her role as a mentor to a younger generation of Mexican photographers, including Flor Garduño, Victor Monroy, Estanislao Ortíz, and Sergio Carlos Rey.

 

Throughout a career, Kati Horna produced a vast and varied body of work that defies easy categorisation. From reportage to photomontages, from portraiture to photographic abstraction, and from commercial work to fantastical photo stories, Horna’s images demonstrate her mastery of the medium, experimental sensibility, and fiercely independent point of view. With her camera as a compass, she traversed the commotions of her century - revolution, war, and exile - and found refuge and fulfilment in creative collaboration with others.