In the Gallery of Design art exhibit Regarding Beauty, curator and photographer Deborah Willis exposes a series of photographs of the past and present of African-American women through “shotgun” houses, women in beauty salons and bodybuilders in an explanation of how beauty is evident throughout African-American culture.

“I continue to photograph and use my own family photographs and archival references to incorporate stories and social politics into my art, inviting a larger public to imagine these experiences — both collective and individual — of African-Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.”

Willis is currently teaching at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University while she continues her research and documentation of the history of African-American photographers and incorporates it into her own artwork.

“I am concerned with the present and its linkage to the past; identity through its connection to community and ideas that are fully imagined through spirituality and the art-making process,” said Willis in her artist’s statement.

The collection of photographs that represent the past is that of the “shotgun” houses. A “shotgun” house is one-room wide and three or four rooms deep and in the 1880s was home to the working class people, including free blacks and immigrants in the south.

The photographs of “shotgun” houses are unique, because they depict small, rundown, ghost-town images of old, forgotten homes, yet through digital print, words are placed on the photographs, giving the pictures memories. One “shotgun” house has the words “Gloria was known for her catfish at the juke joint” and another reads “Mary used to bake peach cobbler every Saturday.”

“I linked the historical past with my own personal history,” Willis said. “In doing that, I became the storyteller, the spectator and the artist.”

Willis’ mother worked in a beauty salon throughout her childhood and continues to today. Willis views a beauty shop as a place for women to mingle, joke and express themselves.

“I like the Beauty Shop the best,” sophomore Mary Savig said. “[Willis] is extremely intelligent about African art history — she actually knows the history behind the photography.”

Willis also has a collection of photographs in The Bodybuilder Series. She photographs Nancy Lewis, a bodybuilder, in several poses as she flexes her muscles. Willis’ intention is to focus on the female body and how the world of physical work is usually gender-specific.

“The black female body, if viewed under lens of actual work, deconstructs and re-configures the image of women, pointing to literal strength and not figurative, emotionally specific moments,” explained Willis.

April 11, Willis will talk about her photography and its title, Regarding Beauty.

“I explore the possibilities of these experiences and reinvest in black female agency as a way of locating an identity of the black female artists in history,” Willis said.