“It was dark of light but bright of soul,” the photographerLarry Finksaid of one of the inaugural balls that lit up Washington, D.C., this past weekend. Fink, who was commissioned byThe New Yorkerto coverNewt Gingrich’s 2012 run for the Republican Presidential nomination, returned to the nation’s capital to shoot the 2013 inauguration festivities.

Fink is best known for his black-and-white photographs of Hollywood parties and their attending personalities. Turning that eye to Washington, he captured the glitz and glamor of the Inaugural Ball, the H.O.P.E. Inaugural Youth Ball, and the African American Church Ball.

- Elissa Curtis

Click-through for a slideshow: http://nyr.kr/Tsdrc2

Inaugural dresses are not just casual cultural relics; not for any First Lady, and especially not for Michelle Obama…

Amy Davidson on why the First Lady’s inaugural dress is an important subject: http://nyr.kr/XV7BgT

Photograph by Mario Tama/Getty.

Hendrik Hertzberg looks at the allusions to Lincoln, Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. in President Obama’s second inaugural speech: http://nyr.kr/WkhLWs

Photograph of Lincoln’s second Inaugural Address by Alexander Gardner/Courtesy Library of Congress.

Richard Socarides: 

No one anticipated it, but President Barack Obama used the occasion of his second Inaugural Address to give what was perhaps the most important gay-rights speech in American history…

Not only was this a call to end discrimination, but an unambiguous argument for the recognition of same-sex marriage across the country.

For more: http://nyr.kr/VMrdnU

Here’s a look back at how our cover artists have depicted the President since 2008: http://nyr.kr/XMWsPp

Here’s a look back at how our cover artists have depicted the President since 2008: http://nyr.kr/XMWsPp

In the past four years, the covers that feature President Obama, his family, and his political foes have taken many forms. Here’s a look back at how our cover artists have depicted the President since 2008: http://nyr.kr/XMWsPp

Ian Crouch looks at a brief history of Inaugural poems, from Robert Frost to Elizabeth Alexander, and tells us what we should listen for when Richard Blanco reads his poem on Monday: http://nyr.kr/13MvxHv

Photograph by B. Anthony Stewart/National Geographic/Getty.

(Source: newyorker.com)