In the heart of Mexico City, a new generation is challenging strict traditions around expression of gender, sex, sexuality, and religion. They are daring – often at great personal risk in a cul¬ture that has lagged in equality and equal rights of all kinds – to embody the ultimate taboo: being themselves. In the photo series Birds of Mexico, Pieter Henket presents portraits of a diverse group of these revolutionaries, high¬lighting the flourishing of free expression at the heart of the movement.
Through vivid and illuminating black and white portraiture, Henket collaborates with this new generation of Mexicans to share with the world their individual ways of breaking bonds that constrain their true identities. Costumed in the garments, fabrics, and accoutrements of traditional Mexican and Catholic icons along with Indigenous cultural references they do not reject these identities, but expand, redefine, and open them up to new ways of thinking.