Dutch photographer Pieter Henket has long been interested in people who express themselves beyond society’s unspoken rules. His new book, Birds of Mexico City – named for his subjects finding their own sense of freedom – is the result of close collaboration with stylist Chino Castilla and young local creatives, examining queerness and transformation. These figures, channelling both Catholic and indigenous Mexican symbolism, pose in thoughtfully selected garments, powerful and dignified in the light.
As Henket says: “This is about a new generation of Mexicans sharing with the world their individual ways of breaking the constraints that have traditionally defined identity. They are not rejecting where they come from, but expanding it, reshaping it, and opening it up to new ways of thinking.”
Birds of Mexico City by Pieter Henket is published by Damiani Books on 30 April
