The Hungarian Katalin Deutsch Blau, known as Kati Horna, was born into a well-off Jewish family. At a very young age, she began to sympathise with leftist movements, where she eventually met Paul Partos. As a result of his political activism, the couple left Hungary.

By 1929, they had settled in Berlin, where they met Bertolt Brecht, the anarchist writer Erich Mühsam and the journalist Agustin Souchy. It was then that she began to work as a reporter for the Dephot photo agency. Shortly after the Nazi party came to power, the couple managed to return to Budapest, where they married. Kati then came into an inheritance that allowed her to study at József Pécsi’s prestigious photography school. The experience lasted for just a few weeks before they emigrated to Paris. There followed a period of profound financial precariousness and collaborations with Agence Photo Anglo Continental, in which the couple survived on money they received from friends.
 
In January 1937, Paul Partos (or Polgare) and Kati Deutsch began to work for the foreign desk of the Information and Propaganda Office of the CNT-FAI, which was headed by Souchy, in a context of incipient counterrevolution that would culminate in the ‘Hechos de Mayo’ [literally, the May Events, a series of internal clashes within the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War]. In April, the office would create the short-lived agency Photo SPA to send images overseas, a section for which the photographer worked tirelessly. Although she had lived in Barcelona since her arrival in the country, in July, she relocated to Valencia for a few months, before returning to the Catalan capital.

Horna depicted the Barcelona rearguard and also toured part of Spain at war, including the Aragon front to portray the experience of the Council of Aragon, Xàtiva, Gandia, Silla, Vélez Rubio, Alcázar de San Juan, Emma Goldman’s stay in Valencia in September, the Madrid front and, in December, the battle of Teruel.

In addition to contributing to Solidaridad Obrera, the ‘obrera del arte’ [art worker] as she called herself, published regularly in Tierra y Libertad and was a staff member of Umbral magazine from its founding. In its newsroom, she met the artist José Horna, with whom she would share the rest of her life. Her work was regularly featured on the weekly’s cover, as well as in extensive photo stories in its pages. Her images were also included in the photo-book ¿España? Un libro de imágenes sobre cuentos y calumnias fascistas [Spain? A picture book about fascist tales and slander] published by the office.

All of her work on the war is characterised by its depiction of daily life, eschewing the photojournalistic cannon, marked by its quest for spectacular images of the front and horror. Proof of this can be found in her covers for Umbral, full-page portraits of women, the elderly and smiling children. It was also during her stay in Spain that she began to publish photomontages, in both Umbral and the magazine Libre-Estudio. She collaborated sporadically with Mujeres Libres, as well.

In the middle of 1938, she travelled to Paris and never returned. Following the republican defeat in Spain, José Horna crossed the French border and was detained in a concentration camp. The photographer managed to secure his release, and the two set off for Mexico, where they would stay for the rest of their lives, without ever giving up their frenetic artistic and cultural activities related to the image.

Part of her work on the war is held by the Centro Documental de la Memoria Histórica [Historical Memory Documentation Centre] and can be consulted online. Some 500 negatives and prints can also be found in the CNT-FAI collection in Amsterdam.