A disproportionate number of major twentieth-century photographers have come from Hungary: Moholy-Nagy, Kertesz, Brassaï, and Robert Capa. Kati Horna shared their approach to the medium, making photomontages as well as working in a range of modes. In Spain during the Civil War, Horna photographed civilians and made propaganda posters in support of the anarchists. In 'Peasants! The Federation of Iberian Anarchists is with you', the juxtaposition of the steeply-angled plough and the tilted figure of the sturdy peasant woman hints at a positive vision of a future world common to posters by artists in the USSR such as El Lissitsky and Klutsis. It tries to express both continuity and dynamism – an awkward combination but one which encapsulates the contradictory relationship between modernisation and the individual.

The majority of her war photographs are compassionately-observed scenes from behind the front lines but there are some striking images using superimposition. In 'The Aragon Front' two negatives are superimposed and then printed, so that an old woman and child appear as though ghosts in the middle of a house ruined in the fighting. The image is specific to the Spanish conflict but could express the fate of victims in any war, the different photo-images are so subtly conjoined that the consequences of the conflict are made immediately manifest. In 'Stairway to the Cathedral', Horna overlays a portrait of a beautiful woman on a stairway wall to create a sinister atmosphere of imprisonment and surveillance. The original portrait is remarkably fine, reminiscent of her photography teacher, József Pécsi. Pécsi included photographic manipulation techniques such as superimposition in his courses. Well-known to photograpers at the time, some like Horna, were to make them vital forms of expression and part of the practice of avant-garde artists.

The collaborative photomontages of Josef and Kati Horna are variations on this genre; the 'Childhood' series situate isolated fragments within the illusion of a continuous space. It is interesting to compare them with Moholy-Nagy's 'photoplastics' and with surrealist photomontages. Moholy-Nagy wanted to distinguish the 'photo-plastic' from dada photomontages, combining photo-elements on a spare white surface, often arranged within a geometric, abstract framework. Surrealist photomontage tended to juxtapose unrelated images to construct a complete, but unfamiliar or irrational scene. The Hornas' photomontages suggest a dream-like scene by suspending figures and fragments of architecture in an uncertain, but not abstract space. While Moholy-Nagy sought to convey the simultaneity of modern urban experiences, – in the Hornas' work the simultaneity is more related to the condensations and displacements of dreams.