James Van Der Zee: A couple wearing raccoon coats with a Cadillac, taken on West 127th Street, New York City, 1932. (Montague Collection)

Currently running at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the photographic exhibit Posing Beauty in African-American Culture takes a look at the evolution of clothing and notions of beauty in the black community. Featuring work by such esteemed photographers as James Van Der Zee and Jamel Shabazz, Posing Beauty is a thought-provoking survey of pictures that are arresting, sometimes heartbreaking and often empowering.

The exhibit is curated by Deborah Willis with images on loan from Kenneth Montague, an art collector who runs the Wedge Gallery in Toronto. Montague offered us a guided tour through the key works.

Regarding the above picture, Montague says, "Van Der Zee is a very well-known Harlem photographer, and in the 1930s in Harlem, there was a blossoming of creative arts, writing, photography and painting on par with Paris at the turn of the century. One of those people in the upscale scene was James, and he was like those people in the photo. He's one of those upper-class black Americans. This was Harlem before the fall, when it was beset with the drug and poverty problems in the 1970s.

"I was born in Windsor [Ont.] to parents from Jamaica. I never really had the sense of the sophistication and richness of African-American life. Luckily, my dad did graduate work in education in Detroit, and my mom would take us to the Detroit Institute of Arts, and I remember in Grade 5 seeing this actual print. Deb Willis, the curator, also had this experience. And it remained with me — this sophisticated couple in their raccoon coats with the car and white-walled tires. It's compelling, because it shows the economic power so unlike what I was seeing at the time in the 1960s. It was a shape-shifter for me."

Seydou Keita: Untitled (Three Men in White Shirts), Bamako, Mali, 1952-1955. (Montague Collection)

"This is one of those shots where you think, wait a minute — West Africa in the 1950s? I decided to include this in my selection because there is a synergy and reference to African-American fashion, and what African-Americans were doing at the time was influencing people around the globe. The guys are wearing the white shirts, pants flipped up, the open top and it's what jazz musicians were wearing at this time. There is a certain showing off that is part of black style. Even though they are of humble means. It's not like they are expensive clothes — it's about how they're worn and the way they pose themselves is very self-conscious. This is every emblematic of black style, this slick laidbackness."

Jamel Shabazz: Untitled (Two Women in Blue on Subway), New York City, circa 1980s. (Montague Collection)

"[Jamel Shabazz] is 19 when he takes this shot. He's using a big SLR camera, and his thing was documenting people on the subway and on the street. He's kind of saying that ordinary people on the street are also celebrities, their own stars. This is a unique moment in African-American history: it's the birth of hip-hop culture, and [Shabazz] had the foresight to want to capture it because it was beautiful to him. It was the 1980s, and it's mostly Brooklyn or Harlem. For many years, he worked at Rikers Island maximum security prison. When going to work and back, he'd take pictures of people on the subway and on the street. He's the photographer who engages his subjects in the making of an image. He's all about getting 'da flava' — that's his phrase — talking people into making a pose."

Steven Shames: At Home, Huey P. Newton Listens to Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited, Berkeley, 1970. (Curated by Deborah Willis and organized by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, California)

"Huey [P. Newton] and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party, and this was in Berkeley [Calif.], which was the centre of youth culture in the 1960s. It was an important time for change. The Black Panthers were into militancy and, you know, by any means necessary. But hey, these were incredibly good-looking, stylish guys, too. You look at this and you think, What a fantastic-looking guy — he's got stylish pants and there is this set-up with the light coming, he's looking like Michelangelo's David. It's a moment in time, and prophetically, there's this plant behind him and you can see the chain almost like a noose around his neck, the chain is right by his head. It prophesizes him going to jail and getting shot and what happens to the Panthers.

"It's also showing him to be a Renaissance man because you'd expect him, such a Black Power guy, to have a soul record in his hand — and he's got Bob Dylan!"

Ernest Withers: Isaac Hayes in his office at Stax Records, Memphis, circa 1970s. (Curated by Deborah Willis and organized by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, California)

"There's so much happening in this photo. It's riot of colour, the detail, the texture, the graphic nature of it. In the background, it's almost like a jail cell. Look at his shirt — you could call it a blouse — this billowing thing, he's the cool guy. Of course, the echo of stripes on his shirt is striking. He's just dead cool with sunglasses, this white telephone … and what's he saying? Is he firing someone? Is he telling an artist what to do? And, the chair is this heart-shaped thing with padded leather. It's a throne. He created this room. He art-directed it himself. This is how he wants people to see him. Here's a man who is super-macho and unafraid to be this flamboyant, super-colourful guy. And the cigarette smoke just over his crotch area is like simmering up over his loins. It's killer."

Ken Ramsay: The Head (Susan Taylor), 1971. (Curated by Deborah Willis and organized by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, California)

"I grew up going to Jamaica every summer, and my mother's brother has this picture, to this day, in his family room. It's an iconic photograph for Jamaican people in the '70s. He told me, 'When I die, I give it to you, but not before then.' Ramsay is a black Jamaican photographer and he died recently. He has a whole body of work about the beauty of posing and Susan Taylor, the subject, is very famous. She was one of the first big black models and she later founded and became the editor of Essence magazine. She's making a statement here about Black Power and women's rights. She shaved her head as if saying: this is a new way of seeing me as a beautiful woman. It emphasizes her eyelashes, her nose, her full lips, the earrings, the curve of her back. The absence of hair — remember, at the time, the afro was so big. She's saying, 'Look at me. Forget about the hair.' It's redefining black beauty."

Garry Winogrand: Untitled, from the series Women Are Beautiful, circa 1970s. (Curated by Deborah Willis and organized by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, California)

"Winogrand is a white photographer. He's a street photographer par excellence in New York City. In a series called Women Are Beautiful, he was focusing on strange, odd moments that happen in street culture. In this shot, the mother's got all the tropes of 1970s Black American style: her afro, her blouse, the cut of her pants, the jewelry, the bangles. The kid is wearing what I used to wear — it's called a dashiki — which was an emblem of Africa. A lot of academics, like Cornell West, were wearing this stuff as a statement. There's a lot happening here — the striking graphic clashing of the patterns on the clothing, and there's a black woman on the left with an afro and she's wearing a similar kind of blouse. Most interestingly, there is a white woman on the far left who, by contrast, looks so regular wearing her little blouse, her straight hair. It's obvious on Winogrand's part in the set-up, as if to say, look how cool the black folks are."

Mickalene Thomas: Sista Sista Lady Blue, from Odalisque, 2007. (Curated by Deborah Willis and organized by Curatorial Assistance, Pasadena, California)

"[Mickalene] Thomas is among the leading, emerging young photographers in contemporary art. I see her works everywhere around the world. She's an out-of-the-closet lesbian who's really interested in black women who are very empowered and self-styled. These are usually friends of hers. It's an ode to an era and retelling the story of '70s-era blaxploitation. She's saying, these women are heroes of mine.

"The colour of the dress, the heavy make-up and the boots — there's a heavy sexuality in the way she's sitting. There's someone reflected in the mirror, so there's a voyeuristic thing and the paneling of the basement gives the photo an intimacy. She's saying, 'Look at all the work that has been done to make this a love den.' This photo is emblematic of a contemporary artist who is using her art, her history and personal politics to create a new visual language about beauty."

Posing Beauty in African American Culture runs at the Art Gallery of Hamilton until May 9.

June Chua writes about the arts for CBC News.