A Photograph. A Narration. Kati Horna and the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

In 2019, a re-
searcher found in Amsterdam the unknown negatives the Hungarian photographer Kati Horna took in
Spain during the Spanish Civil War, from January 1937 to March 1938. When the Second World War
broke out, Horna was forced to escape to Mexico and, in the attempt to save her work, she decided to
send it elsewhere. This unexpected discovery revives the cultural debate on three different aspects:
Kati Horna’s role as a Jewish woman photographer in Europe during the Thirties; her photographic
work and its peculiar way to use the picture as a powerful narration device; and finally, the necessity
to include her name among the important ones for her contribution to history and photography. These
aspects weave together and need to be explained through a biographic and visual path I propose for
this article.