Böcker av Rohina Hoffman

Isolated in the confinements of her Los Angeles home during the covid lockdown, Rohina Hoffman takes a metaphorical journey of connecting her roots to food through the rituals of daily meals. In Embrace she combines two photographic projects. In Gratitude showcases the food she used to make dinners for her family. Generation 1.75 is a visual memoir of identity, belonging, and the complexities of acculturation. For Hoffman, photographing family members holding dinner ingredients turned into a tool of expressing new deep gratitude for the food. She often thought of all the effort and the hands that had touched the produce before it ended up with her family. The food also became the means of connecting with her family members and reconnecting with her Indian roots in a more profound way. As part of Generation 1.5/1.75 (a term coined by Professor Ruben Rumbaut in 1969 to distinguish those who immigrate as children from their parents who immigrate as adults), Hoffman has struggled with issues of identity and the feeling of "Otherness".  The photographs of food and family are seasoned with Hoffman's poetry. Her essay, 'Not All Peacocks are Blue', published in English and Hindi, provides a deeper look into the photographer's background and serves as a bridge between the two projects. Embrace is a visual examination of how life's simple pleasures expand the quality of human existence and how that expansion helps an individual to secure their identity.

Rohina Hoffman was born in India and raised in New Jersey. She received a B.S. in Neural Sciences from Brown University and an M.D. from Brown University School of Medicine. While a student at Brown she studied photography at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1994, she moved to Los Angeles to begin her residency in neurology at UCLA Medical Center but continued her interest in photography. After a career in neurology, she devoted herself full time as a fine art photographer with the support of mentors Aline Smithson and Ken Merfeld. Her award winning work has been exhibited in museums and galleries both nationally and internationally including the Griffin Museum of Photography, Southeast Center of Photography, dnj Gallery, Tilt Gallery, Stephen F. Austin State University School of Art and the Center for Fine Art Photography. Her photography has appeared in publications such as Shots Magazine, Edge of Humanity, and Lenscratch. She lives in Los Angeles and will be having an opening of Hair Stories at Brown University¿s Warren Alpert Medical School in January 2019.