The startlingly titled and utterly bizarre photo-series Ode to Necrophilia by Hungarian-Mexican photographer Kati Horna, featuring as a model the brilliant Leonora Carrington, was published in the short lived but innovative Mexican avant-garde magazine S.NOB in 1962.
Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Hungary in 1912, Horna lived in Berlin and Paris before moving to Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War where she was empoyed as the official photographer for the CNT-FAI. Her groundbreaking war photographs that intimately portrayed the effects of the conflict on the civilian population was frequently featured in Spanish Anarchist journals Umbral and Tierra y Libertad as well as internationally. In 1939 she fled with her husband the Spanish anarchist José Horna, first to Paris then to Mexico. Mexico was the first choice for a number of left-leaning artists and intellectuals escaping Europe’s nightmare slide into fascism. It was here that she met Remedios Varo, the wealthy art patron Edward James, Benjamin Peret and later Leonora Carrington.
S.NOB was founded by literacy radicals Salvador Elizondo and Juan Garçia Ponce and featured works by the Mexican avant-garde and European emigres with Edward James helping with funding to ensure artistic freedom. It ran for seven issues in 1962.
Below is a selection of images from the series. A quick note regarding the umbrella, which would appear to refer not only to Lautreamont’s famous dictum in Les Chants De Maldoror, ‘As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table’, but also to one of her many outstanding photographs of the Spanish Civil War, Rally at Via Durutti, which I have also included.
Wow, those pictures are brilliant.
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Thank you Watt, aren’t they just. I am fascinated and enthralled by them. Glad you feel the same.
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Stunning images. My favourites are the ones featuring the curve of Leonora’s naked back.
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Thank you Nikita, it is quite some series and Leonora is quite the model, elevating the series to the level of the sublime. Glad you enjoyed.
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A startling theme of loss, suffering, and displacement captured by K. Horna. Most interesting is the role of muse by the beautiful surrealist painter Leonora Carrington who impressively captures the role of the mourning woman. Remarkable post Mr. Cake.
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Thank you Miss Heart, it is incredibly poignant, eerie and profound. Leonora is simply stunning in the series. My pleasure to share such a stunning set of images.
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It surely is, I find the photograph of the woman on the bedside holding the umbrella with a cigarette between her fingers especially compelling. I failed to mention how much I love the Rally, fascinating.
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They is really is a lot to take in, the photographs contain so many details hiding in plain sight. Although morbid it is extraordinarily poetic. I had to include the rally though I rather shoe horned it in.
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I’m glad you did, it deserves to be displayed. As you point out there are many small details that are very intriguing. One needs to examine these photographs carefully or miss some extraordinary and brilliant details.
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I would love to get hold of the original magazine and see the layout and the whole series. Pity I cannot understand Spanish.
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That would be wonderful.
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Surrealism was very good with magazines right from the very beginning. I should write about that!
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You should. A most interesting subject.
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I will definitely think about it. They were masters at causing a stir from a small base by amplification. Actually that sounds kind of like now.
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It does. I feel sure they were more interesting and far less disturbing. I really would love to read and see the originals.
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I was thinking about this and actually I have written a couple of posts on Individual surrealist magazines….I will send the links
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https://cakeordeathsite.wordpress.com/2017/05/15/the-art-of-provocation/
https://cakeordeathsite.wordpress.com/2017/05/16/the-art-of-provocation-ii/
https://cakeordeathsite.wordpress.com/2018/11/05/documents/
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Wonderful, I look forward to visiting your links. Thank you kindly!
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My pleasure.
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An outstanding discovery! The series is fascinating. With such a title, I was a little afraid to look but in good Surrealist fashion, there is more in what we don’t see than what we do. My favorites of the series are the first (figure in black) and fourth (nude figure bent over). The natural light from the window is the perfect caster of shadows. There are subtle reflections in all the shiny surfaces too – I like that detail. But The Rally is a stunning photo as well. Such a great find! Love!
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Thank you Lily, the title does induce a sense of trepidation but the series confronts and assuages our fears. The mourning robes are very eerie and Leonora is a perfect model, mature and with gravitas. I am stunned by my discovery of this photographer frankly and I agree the Rally at Via Durutti is brilliant.
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Leonora would have already logged plenty of life experiences by this point. She is the perfect choice.
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Indeed with a profound beauty than is far more than skin deep.
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The most authentic and timeless beauty
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Indeed.
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Melancholic and slightly sad images, very impressive.
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Thank you Sue…very melancholic and I find them poetic as well, living up to the Ode part of the title.
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Yes, not at all just like the second part of the title
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Scary title but the Surrealists did like to shock.
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