The photographer Delphine Diaw Diallo’s “Highness” series originated a few years ago as a collaboration with the hairstylist Joanne Petit Frere, who creates fantastical, sculptural styles with real hair. Frere asked Diallo, a graduate of the Academie Charpentier of Visual Arts in Paris, to photograph her work, and the two started working together on a series of increasingly revealing portraits. Diallo, who was born to a Senegalese father and a French mother in Paris, was attracted to the idea of women recreating themselves — and wanted to challenge traditional notions of femininity and eminence. “What kind of queen can I create?” she says. “How can I redefine what highness means to a woman’s experience?” To her, the true “highnesses” are warriors.

Works from “Highness” are on view in “ReSignifications: Imagining the Black Body and Re-Staging Histories” May 29- Aug. 29 at NYU Florence, Via Bolognese 120, and Museo Stefano Bardini, Via Delle Belle Donne, 39, Florence.