The colorful bus, with “Merci’’ and “Amour’’ painted on its sides and images of lions flanking its cherry red bumper, motors through a crowded Haitian street.

The photograph of a “Tap-Tap,’’ the only method of public transportation on the impoverished Caribbean island, is one of several pictures displayed at a new exhibit at the Cambridge Public Library commemorating the seventh anniversary of a devastating earthquake in Haiti.

“Resilience and Resistance’’ includes a half-dozen photographs of the island’s recovery from the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that displaced close to 1.5 million people in 2010. On Saturday, nearly 50 people gathered at the library to mark the opening with a mix of poetry and reflection.

“The power of art to get people closer to emotion, to their roots, and to their country, it’s more than the superficial imagery you get from Facebook, sensational reporting from the news media,’’ said Charlot Lucien, founder of the Haitian Artists Assembly of Massachusetts, which organized the exhibit. “Art is beyond mainstream media and social media.’’

Lucien displayed an oil painting depicting a woman dressed in white, laboring to clean up from the devastation. Against a nearly lightless background, the woman turns her back, her eyes hidden under a big floppy hat. She grasps a long wooden broom, which she uses to sweep away a pile of red brick rubble.

“She is cleaning emotional debris, not just physical debris,’’ Lucien said, noting the painting shows the resolve of the Haitian people to recover from the devastation, despite international relief efforts.

“It wasn’t the international organizations coming with their heavy equipment, it was the people, the women who were plumbing the debris,’’ said Lucien, who raises money to send art supplies to children in his home country.

The library exhibit features the work of photographers Doumafis LaFontan of Boston, John Ripton of Kennebunkport, Maine, and Steve Arnesen of New York City. It runs until Feb. 14.

The exhibit aims to capture the deep emotional and physical pain people suffered, and their resilience to rebuild their lives. It also addresses the controversy about inadequate relief efforts from both the Haitian government and international relief organizations.

Few on the island or their families abroad were left untouched, said Boston Poet Laureate Danielle Legros Georges, who was born in Haiti and visited the country shortly after the earthquake.

Speaking at the library, she recalled family members, friends, political leaders and feminist thinkers lost in the earthquake and the cholera epidemic that followed.

“Many of those lives could have been saved,’’ Georges said.

Raising her right hand overhead, Georges then read from a poem.

“The earth shook, a portal opened, I walked through it,’’ she said in low voice, her forehead knit.

She repeated the line to a silent room.

Then she closed her eyes and repeated it again, more than a dozen times.

“The earth shook, a portal opened, I walked through it.’’

Amanda Burke can be reached at amanda.burke@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @charlie_acb.