Portraits of Poets: 1910 – 2010 Exhibition, National Arts Club, New York, NY.

January 5, 2010 — Recently, I was invited to photograph the opening night of the Portraits of Poets 1910-2010 exhibit, as part of the Centennial Anniversary celebrations of the Poetry Society of America (PSA) — the organization responsible for the excellent Poetry in Motion subway series among many other poetry-celebratory endeavors.

The evening featured gripping performances by poets Galway Kinnell, Marie Ponsot, Yusef Komnunyakaa, Richard Howard, and Sapphire — the latter, whos novel is now the major Oscar-buzzy motion picture, Precious.

The exhibit, which will be up through January 15th at the National Arts Club in Gramercy, Manhattan, includes drawings, photographs, and oil portraits of distinguished poets from W. B. Yeats, Robert Frost, and Marianne Moore to Lorine Niedecker, Frank O’Hara, Etheridge Knight, Gary Snyder, Adrienne Rich, and Audre Lorde.

Even if you missed the opening night cocktails and hors d’oeuvres, I highly recommend checking out the incredible mansion-space as well as the wonderful works of art.

Before I’m about to jump on a 20-some hour flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, I wanted to share some photos of an event I recently photographed. The party was to introduce the eco-friendly fashion Web site, Ecouterre.com, from the spirited, green-minded folks at Inhabitat.com.

I got the call mere hours before showtime, but luckily was able to squeeze it in and get some good shots of the party people. The event took place at Kaight NYC in the Lower East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, and included complimentary organic huckleberry vodka cocktails, vegan raspberry jam cookies and a raffled off handmade Andean Collection necklace made from ivory palm.

Additional writeups (and some of my bonus photography) are floating around the Web, including at PaperMag.com, Ecouterre.com and Kaight NYC’s Web site.

Stay Green!