Pieter Henket is a Dutch photographer living and working in New York City known for a photographic style that takes inspiration from the 17th-century Dutch Golden Age of painting. His notable work includes photographing Congolese acting out their mythologies in the Congo rainforest for the photo series and book Congo Tales, published by Random House in 2018. His portraits of the people who call the Congo rainforest homemade world news and was featured on the front page of the New York Times Arts section, the front page of the New York Times International Edition, and on PBS News Hour, National Public Radio, Public Radio International, BBC Radio, and dozens of other world media outlets. His other published books include The Way I See It (Uitgeverij De Kunst, 2013) and Stars to the Sun (Lannoo Publishers/Racine, 2014). Pieter is also known for celebrity portraiture, including, notably, shooting the cover of Lady Gaga’s debut album The Fame.
Henket’s photography has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, 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 collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Henket’s Congo Tales photo series is also the main presentation of the Republic of Congo at the 2021 World Expo in Dubai.
Henket is finishing his new photo series Birds of Mexico about 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.