Narratives of Border Crossing in Kati Horna’s Photographic Series

Within a historical and epistemological framework of displacement, this chapter posits the intersecting dimensions in Kati Horna’s photographic series. Beginning with her Parisian period (1933), Horna developed a series of narrative photographs infused with surrealism that empower the domestic sphere and challenge the political context during the rise of fascism. Later, during Spanish Civil War, she photographed the conflict from behind the scenes: the restless faces of injured soldiers, mothers and children in their daily lives. Her multiple exiles to Paris, to several places in Spain and then to Mexico permeate her border-crossing narratives. This article begins by outlining Horna’s personal and artistic displacement. It then examines how she narrated the city, tracing intersections of power and discrimination related to politics, nationality, class, and gender as well as to disability. In her photographs, Horna engages with urban borderlands not only as part of the city’s architecture but also as epistemological frontiers. The final section focuses on her series La Castañeda (1944), a photographic tale that reveals the peripheral setting of a public psychiatric institution that blurs the lines between sanity and insanity. Horna’s sharp eye narrates a suburban environment outside the margins of a society where mobility and immobility are confronted.