Birds of Mexico City is a collection of portraits Pieter Henket made in Mexico City over the past several years. The series focuses on a new generation of young Mexicans redefining contemporary expressions of gender, identity, tradition, and spirituality.
After spending considerable time in the city, Henket and stylist Chino Castilla established a physical space where artists could collaborate and express themselves freely. The space became a vibrant intersection of disciplines—dancers, mask makers, designers, and performers—each exploring the boundaries between Mexico’s deeply rooted Catholic traditions and the freedom of modern self-expression.
Birds of Mexico City was developed as a highly collaborative project. For Pieter Henket, it was essential that the work not only portray a new generation, but also take shape in dialogue with that generation.
He worked closely with a group of young, multidisciplinary collaborators whose perspectives became an integral part of the project’s final form.
The series’ visual language was developed in close collaboration with stylist and creative director Chino Castilla and his team. Rather than use a conventional styling approach, Castilla worked directly with each participant to translate personal histories, cultural references, and emotional states into visual form.
Through this process, the costumes became a central element of the work, allowing each individual to assume a version of themselves that feels both amplified and deeply authentic.
Writer and poet Renata Juárez Huerdo also worked intensively with many of the participants, inviting them to reflect on their own experiences and inner worlds. Through these conversations, she developed a series of texts to accompany the photographs.
Her texts bring the subjects’ voices directly into the work, grounding the images in lived experience and adding another layer of authorship.
Within this structure, images and text are carefully measured to create rhythm.
The book was conceived as a solid, almost sculptural object, like a block of concrete, in which muted shades of gray are punctuated by accents of color that introduce energy and contrast.
Within this structure, images and text are carefully measured to create rhythm. The photographs, the participants’ voices, and the use of color interact across the pages, allowing readers to move through the book as if moving through a space. The design becomes both a framework and a physical environment, shaping how the work is experienced.
The project was produced by Pieter Henket and his husband, Roger Inniss, through their New York -based production company Boom Productions Inc., supporting a collaborative, artist-led process.
For Henket, acknowledging these contributions is essential. Birds of Mexico City is not merely a series of images, but the result of a shared process shaped by multiple voices. By working closely with partners from different cultural backgrounds and perspectives, the project reflects the ideas it explores: identity, dialogue, and the possibility of understanding one another more fully.
Pieter Henket is a Dutch fine-art photographer based in New York. His work explores identity, presence, and the symbolic power of portraiture, using light and composition to tell human stories. His work is partly inspired by a 17th-century Dutch painting tradition in which light plays a narrative and meaningful role.
Born into a family of artists in the Netherlands, he developed an early sensitivity to light, composition, and storytelling—an influence that continues to shape his work.
In 1998, Henket moved to New York, where he continued developing his work by photographing people around him and gradually creating a visual language rooted in presence and form. Henket gained international recognition with his portrait of Lady Gaga for the cover of her debut album The Fame (2008).
Although this early work is widely known, it belongs to a broader practice increasingly focused on long-term conceptual projects. A defining body of work is
Congo Tales (2018), a photographic series and book created in close collaboration with local communities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The project centers on mythology, identity, and the relationship between people and their environment, and was featured on the front page of the arts section of The New York Times and its international edition. It was later presented as the principal artistic installation representing the Democratic Republic of the Congo at Expo 2020 Dubai.
He is the author of The Way I See It (2013) and Stars to the Sun (2014). In his work, Henket constructs visual narratives centered on dignity, transformation, and human connection. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum de Fundatie, and Museum Barberini, and is part of the Rijksmuseum collection. Henket is represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery, Bildhalle, and The Hulett Collection.
Pieter will present the project on May 19 at Rizzoli Bookstore, after which the work will be on view this summer (June 12 – August 8) at Bildhalle Gallery in Amsterdam.
Birds of Mexico City - Pieter Henket
Pages: 112
Price: € 51,75
Publisher: Damiani
