La Hujer, 2021

Dutch photographer Pieter Henket moved to the United States in 1998, where he studied Documentary Film at the New York Film Academy. After working for the renowned director Joel Schumacher, his fascination for capturing a story in a single shot pulled him towards photography instead of filmmaking. As a self-taught photographer, he is known for his alluring portraits of some the biggest stars in the world, both for his commercial work as well as in his personal, autonomous projects. It is his careful lighting and staging, with strong cinematographic characteristics, which define his signature. With his portraits, Henket manages to capture the very essence of the individual. His strengths lie beyond portraiture however, as his series ‘Stars to the Sun’ (2013) shows. Here, portraits of the visitors of the Carnaval de Rio are mixed with scenes of the festival and stunning shots of Argentinean nature.For his Series ‘Congo Tales’ (2017), Henket travelled to the Congo with a team in order to document the locals’ oral histories for the very first time. This project was in collaboration with the foundation Tales of Us. The people of Mbomo, in the middle of the Congo rainforest, lead isolated lives in harmony with nature. Their oral history, filled with folkloric tales and myths, have never been written down or shared outside of their community. After years of preparation, Henket documented the locals while they prepared for and acted out their own myths. Henket’s latest and ongoing series is ‘Birds of New York’ (2019). For this series, he portrayed many colorful characters, who make New York the diverse and interesting metropolis it is. The powerful poses and costumes reflect the personalities and way of life of the people portrayed. In 2021 Henket added a new chapter to this series with ‘Birds of Mexico’. Henket has worked for magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and Esquire. His work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and in 2013 he was honored with a major solo-exhibition at Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle. His work will also be part of the presentation of the Democratic Republic of The Congo at the World Expo in Dubai. His work has been included in numerous private and museum collections around the world, among which the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.