The Body and the City: Walking Barcelona with las Milicianas and Eileen O’Shaughnessy

In this issue, Lizi Anderson-Cleary looks at the work of Mexican-Hungarian photographer Kati Horna, one of the few foreign female photographers of the Spanish Civil War. Horna's humanitarian-feminist intentions informed her creative vision, one that did not seamlessly align with the male-dominated version of anarcho- syndicalist aims. Such image production amid the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War challenged both prevailing ideas about women's place in society as well as some images produced by allies of the Spanish Republic. Anderson-Cleary's analysis shows how depictions on the Spanish left and their corollaries in the avant-garde movements sometimes repurposed the trope of the female body as a signifier of biological reproduction toward radical ends. Thinking about images of milicianas and other women active in the war, in which they are so often depicted alone or with men, I wondered how we might adjust our historical imagining to see women not just on the frontlines and the city streets at all but also together.