Kati Horna (born Katalin Deutsch Blau; Szilasbalhás, 1912 – Mexico City, 2000) was a Hungarian-born photographer whose work offers a sustained and nuanced engagement with questions of gender, shaped by exile and by her long involvement with illustrated print culture. Formed in the politically engaged circles of Lajos Kassák in Budapest and Karl Korsch in Berlin, she came to photography as both a political tool and a professional practice. After training with József Pécsi, she began working in Paris and later produced a remarkable body of anarchist-aligned images during the Spanish Civil War.

Following her exile to Mexico in 1939 with the artist José Horna, she worked extensively for magazines, producing a wide-ranging body of work. Over the course of her career, she developed an expansive photographic practice that spans projects marked by a surrealist sensibility, portraits of artists, architectural photography, and photo-reportages on diverse subjects. These assignments brought her into contact with a broad network of writers, artists, and performers. While her work encompassed a wide range of topics, her most personal projects often returned to the representation of women, explored not as fixed types but as complex and shifting subjects shaped by social roles, performance, and imagination.

Written by Dr. Michel Otayek© Archivo Privado de Fotografía y Gráfica Kati y José Horna, Mexico City.

Portrait of Kati Horna (Budapest, 1933), Robert Capa