Pieter Henket is a Dutch photographer living and working in New York City. His notable work includes Congo Tales, a photo series and book published by Random House in 2018, for which he photographed Congolese people acting out their mythologies in the Congo rainforest. His portraits of the people who call the Congo rainforest home made world news, and was featured on the front page of the New York Times Arts section and the front page of the New York Times International Edition.
Pieter Henket is also known for celebrity portraiture, including, notably, shooting the cover of Lady Gaga’s debut album The Fame. His photography has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Museum de Fundatie in The Netherlands; and the Museum Barberini in Germany. His work has been included in numerous private and museum collections around the world, including the permanent collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Henket's newest photo series, Birds of Mexico, portrays a new generation that is challenging strict traditions around the expression of gender, sex, sexuality, and religion. They are daring – often at great personal risk in a culture that has lagged in equality and equal rights of all kinds – to embody the ultimate taboo of being themselves.