Like her countryman and friend Robert Capa, Hungarian-born Kati Horna (born Katalin Deutsch) became a citizen of the world through her photographic peregrinations in Germany, Spain, Paris, and Mexico. Horna photographed in Spain during the Civil War alongside Capa. While Capa focused on combat, Horna trained her camera on civilians whose lives were being destroyed by the conflict between the standing Republican Government and fascist forces lead by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. She focused especially on women and children, whose plight she felt was under-documented. In addition to reportage, Horna also created images, such as Subida a la catedral, Barcelona, that showed a more avant-garde approach to the medium, while maintaining her staunch humanist world view. In Subida a la cathedral, Horna superimposes the cathedral wall, with its iron-barred windows, over the face of a woman, creating a meditation on of the church’s oppression of woman.
After she was removed from Spain by the new Fascist Government she fled to Paris briefly, and ultimate settled in Mexico City, becoming part of that city’s brilliant artistic, literary, and political circles and continuing her own style of humanitarian photography.